.^^tt^iam 


mmmfr::^ 


vTACiv  l^*'' ■ "  i 

AKfstX 


;:v.i^'-»yix?x  ^: 


EW  Testamen 


rn 


TOGBAPHS 


BY 


^ 


J.  RENDEL   HARIRIS 


[SUPPLKMEN  r   TO  THE   AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOLOGY,   NO.   12.] 
f 


alifornia 

rional 

ility 


PRES9-OF  Isaac  FRinniiNWALn, 
Baltimore. 


PUHLICATIO5I   AG^CY,  JOHNS   HOPKINS   UNIVERSITY, 

BALTIMORE. 

PRICE     50    CENTS. 


CONTENTS  OF  AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PFIILOLOCtV,  No.   12. 
I. — Eggelin'g's  Translation  of  the  ^atapatha-Brahmana.      15y  W.   D. 

Whitney,  Yale  College,      .         .         .         .         .         .         .         -  391 

II. — On  the  Locality  to  which  the  Treatise  ot  l^alladius  De  Agi  iniltm  ,1 
must  be  assigned.      By   J.    Rendei.    IIakuis,    Johns    Hopkins 
University,    .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .411 

III. — On  some  Points  of  Usage  in  English.     By  Fitzeuvvard  Hall,  ..  422 
IV. — Studies  in  Pindaric  Syntax.     By  the  Editor,  .....  434 

V. — On  a   Probable  Error  in   Plutarch,  Per.  c.  23.      By  C.  D.  Morris, 

Johns  Hopkins  University,  ........   456 

Notes: — A  Peculiarity   of  Keltic   (Irish)    Ritual.     (J    M.   Hart.)— The 
Dialect  of  Assos.     (F.    I).   Allen.)— "  Occlude."     (H.   E.   Shep- 
herd.)    ...         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .461 

Reviews  and  Book  Notices:  .........  465 

Haupt's  Akkadische   Sprache — Zahn's  Cyprian  v.  Antiochien — Mon-  ■ 
ro's  Grammar   of   the   Homeric  Dialect — Kluge's  Etymologisches 
Worterbuch — Horstmann's  Altenglische   Legenden — Hauler's  Ter- 
entiana — Seuffert's    Deutsche   Litteraturdenkmale — Biicheler's  Pe- 
tronius. 

REPORTS: 484 

Fleckeisen's  Jahrbi'icher — Revue  de  Philologie — Mnemosyne. 
Correspondence: — M.  Bloomfield  and  L.  H.  Mills  on  a  forthcoming 

Edition  of  the  Gathas,      .........  486 

Recent  Publications 505 

Index,         . 517 


AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOLOGY. 
Open  to  original  communications  in  all  departments  of  philology,  classical, 
comparative,  oriental,  modern  ;  condensed  reports  of  current  philological  work  ; 
summaries  of  chief  articles  in  the  leading  philological  journals  of  Europe  ; 
reviews  by  specialists ;  bibliographical  lists.  Four  numbers  constitute  a  vol- 
ume, one  volume  each  year.  Subscription  price  $3.00  a  year,  payable  to  the 
editor  in  advance.  For  single  numbers  ($1.00  each)  address  Messrs.  Macmillan 
&  Co.,  22  Bond  Street,  New  York,  who  have  also  charge  of  the  interests  of  the 
Journal  in  England. 

Special  Offer  to  New  Subscribers. — The  management  of  the  Amer- 
ican Journal  of  Philology  offers  to  new  subscribers  the  two  back  volumes 
of  the  Journal  for  $2.00  a  volume,  payment  in  advance.  Vol.  I,  535  pp.. 
Vol.  II,  570  pp.     Specimen  numbers  50  cents. 

P.  O.  Drawer  18.  B.  L.  Gildersleeye,  Baltimore,  Md. 


New  Testament  Autographs 


BY 


J.  RENDEL   HARRIS 


[Supplement  to  The  American  Journal  of  Philology,  No.  12.J 


Press  of  Isaac  Friedknwald, 
Baltimoke. 


/ 


otir. 


<»  OUIf.  UB»m,  MS  AKOWS 


1 


orrpecB^TepocsKAe 

KTHKyplAKiSvirOICTe 

KNOicAyTHCOycepoo 

ArATT6ieNAAH06IAK<M 

oyKepcoA\ONocAAA& 

KAITTANreCOiepiMCOKO 

recTHNAAinQeiANAiA 

rHNAAri0eiANTHN/v\6 
NOyCANeNHMIN  KA  I 
A\e9HMONGCTAieiC 
TONAIttNi^eCTAIMe 

BHMcoNXApiceAeoc 

6ipH  NHTTA  [=>  A^ITATpOC 
KAITTApAiyy^TOy)'! 


oyroylTATpoceNAAH 

GeiAKAli-pATTH  eVA 

pHNAeiANoTieypHKA 

G  KT<i> IS/re  K  N  CD  N  CO  Y 
TtePITTATOyNTACeNA 

AHdeiAKAGuceNTO 

AHNeAABoMGNTTApA 
TT AT  P  O  C  K  A  I  N  y  N  e  POO 

TcoceKypi^oyKCiceN 

ToAHNrPAdiOJNCOIKAl 
NHNAAAAHNel VOMSN 
ATTAP)(HCINAA|-ATTOD 

MeNAAXHAoycKAiAy 

THeCTINHArATTHINJv 


nepiTTATcaMeNKATA 

TAceNToAACAyToy 

AyTHHSNTOAHeCTIN 
KASoCHKOyCATeATT 
Apj^HCINASNAYTH 
TTePITTATHTeOTITToA 

AolTr^ANOle2HA9oN 

e  I  crow  KOC/MONOIMH 

oAAo  A  o  roy  N  TG  c  I N  iTn 
epvo/neNONeNCAPKi 
oyrocecTiNOTrAANoc 

KMOANTI  j(piCTOC 

BAeTrereeAyroy  CI 

NAMHATTOAeCHTeAHp 


rACA/»\e0AAAAAM  IC  Go 
TTAHpHAnoAABHTeiTAC 
OTTpoApCONKAIMHMe 
NCDfMeNTH2ilAA)(HT0y 

)(Y6Noyi<e;(ei  o/ABNON 
eNTHAiAAVHoyrocKAi 

TONTTArepAKAl  TONy 

ioNe)(eieTic  e^^eT 

A/Trpoc  y/A  AC  KAlTAy 
THNTHNAlAA)(HNOy 

<bepeiA\  HAAMBANere 

AyrONGICOIKIANKAl 

;(Ai  pe  I N  Ay  t©m  hA  e  pe 
TeoAe  pcjN  TA  pA  y  T6> 


J^A/PeiNKOIN«Ni6/T0IC 
e  ppO  I C  A  yTOYTO  I  C  TTO 

NH  po  I C  IT  oAA  A  e  KCO  N 

yMiNppAcbeiNoyKS&oy 

AH8HNAlAj(ApTOyKAI 

MeAANOc  AAAAeAmzo 

piSNecBAITTpOCy/AAC 
KMCTOMATTpOCTO/AA  .,sl 

aLAHCAI  INAH^ApAy  *-f*^ 

/AjBNTreTTAHpooMeN  ri 

HiAClTAZeTAICeTA 

TeKNATHCAAeAcf>HCCOY 

THCGKAeKTHC 


PREFACE. 

A  few  words  of  introduction  are  necessary  to  the  investigations 
contained  in  the  following  pages,  in  order  to  remove  some  of  the 
perplexity  which  may  hang  around  the  enunciation  of  the  theory 
which  they  contain. 

In  the  course  of  an  examination  of  the  columnar  arrangement  of 
the  text  of  the  oldest  MS  of  the  New  Testament,  my  attention 
was  drawn  to  a  remarkable  numerical  peculiarity  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  lines  and  columns  of  the  several  books,  and  from  this 
my  mind  was  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  scribes  of  the  New 
Testament  produced  epistles  more  uniformly  written  and  at  the 
closing  page  more  frequently  filled  than  is  the  custom  at  the 
present  day ;  and  that  it  was,  in  fact,  possible  to  reproduce  the 
original  pages  by  a  simple  process  of  numerical  subdivision,  if  only 
the  MS  had  preserved  the  lines  of  the  original  writing.  Further 
study  of  the  Vatican  Codex  showed  that  a  large  number  of  the 
books  of  the  New  Testament  were  capable  of  this  subdivision  (by 
the  very  simple  process  of  dividing  the  column  of  the  MS  into 
three  equal  parts),  and  that  the  pages  resulting  from  the  subdivi- 
sion were  very  closely  related  to  the  original  pages. 

Perhaps  this  will  become  easier  to  apprehend  by  a  simple  varia- 
tion of  the  statement.  Imagine  a  printed  book,  in  which  there  are, 
let  us  say,  ten  equal  pages,  of  thirty  lines  to  each  page,  printed 
uniformly.  If  a  reprint  be  made  of  this  book  in  any  other  form, 
i.  e.  on  pages  and  with  lines  of  a  different  size  to  the  copy,  it  is 
evident  that  the  original  arrangement  of  the  book  will  be  lost,  and 
it  is  very  unlikely  that  the  last  page  of  the  new  book  will  be  a 
complete  one.  If,  however,  the  printer  adheres  to  the  original 
lines,  no  matter  how  he  may  change  his  pages  or  his  type,  we  shall 
always  be  able  to  restore  the  book  to  its  original  shape  by  simple 

1090856 


ii  PREFACE. 

subdivision  of  its  300  lines  into  ten  pages,  although,  of  course,  the 
subdivision  may  not  be  easy  to  detect,  nor  to  demonstrate.  This 
is  what  has  happened  in  the  Vatican  MS  ;  the  scribe  has  retained 
the  original  line,  and  in  a  certain  sense  has  preserved  the  original 
page  also,  since  he  made  his  column  (as  the  investigation  will 
show)  by  placing  three  of  the  original  pages  in  a  vertical  line. 
This  fundamental  fact  is  the  key  to  the  method  of  textual  criticism 
to  which  these  pages  form  an  introduction. 


NEW  TESTAMENT   AUTOGRAPHS. 

A.  I.  In  the  course  of  the  first  lecture,  which  I  had  the  honor  of 
deHvering  in  this  University,  on  the  Textual  Criticism  of  the  New 
Testament,  I  pointed  out  that  the  material  of  the  second  and  third 
Epistles  of  St.  John  was  probably  a  sheet  or  series  of  sheets  of 
papyrus  ;  and  not  only  so,  but  that  in  the  two  documents  mentioned, 
the  sheet  of  paper  was  of  a  given  size,  capable  of  holding  a  given 
quantity  of  uncials.  The  first  of  these  statements  was  based  upon 
the  allusion  which  the  writer  makes  to  paper,  pen,  and  ink  (Sm 

XdpTov  Koi  fieXavos,  II   }ohn.   12  ;    8ia  fieXavns  kol  /caXd/xou,  III  John.   1 3)  ,' 

while  the  second  statement  was  an  inference  from  the  equality  in 
the  contents  of  the  two  Epistles,  which  in  Westcott  and  Hort's  edi- 
tion of  the  New  Testament  occupy  twenty-nine  lines  of  type  apiece, 
and  from  the  evidence  that  in  each  case  the  writer  had  completely 
filled  the  sheet  on  which  he  was  writing,  since  he  complains  of  the  in- 
sufficiency of  his  writing  materials  (woXXa  e^wi/  ipi/  yfjdcjieiv,  noXXd  elxou 
ypd'^ni  aoi).  From  this  point  we  are  led  to  the  enquiry  as  to  the 
usual  size  of  the  sheets  of  paper  employed  in  the  New  Testament 
documents,  and  the  number  employed  in  the  autographs  of  the 
several  books. 

2.  In  order  to  make  the  enquiry  carefully,  we  will  first  tabulate  the 
number  of  columns  and  lines  occupied  by  the  uncial  letters  of  the 
separate  texts,  as  they  are  presented  in  the  oldest  known  manuscripts. 
We  begin,  then,  with  the  Vatican  Codex,  B.  This  manuscript  is 
written  in  columns,  three  to  the  page,  and  each  column  contains 
42  lines  of  uncial  writing.  Omitting  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
the  latter  part  of  which  is  m  a  later  cursive  hand,  and  the  Apocalypse 
which  is  also  supplied  in  cursive  character,'  we  construct  the  follow- 
ing table : 

'  Scrivener  adds  the  Pastoral  Epistles  (Introduction,  p.  96),  apparently  follow- 
ing Cardinal  Mai,  but  I  can  find  no  trace  of  them  in  the  Roman  edition.  The 
Palaeographical  Society,  in  the  description  accompanying  their  facsimile,  follow 
Scrivener. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


Table  I. 

Columns 

Lines 

Tofa/  Lines 

Matthew 

127 

9 

5343 

Mark 

77 

31 

3265 

Luke 

136 

41 

5753 

John 

97 

6 

4080 

Acts 

130 

3 

5463 

Romans 

49 

16 

2074 

I  Corinthians 

46 

6 

1938 

II  Corinthians 

31 

28 

1330 

Galatians 

15 

27 

657 

Ephesians 

16 

22 

694 

Philippians 

II 

0 

462 

Colossians 

II 

15 

477 

I  Thessalonians 

10 

28 

448 

II  Thessalonians 

5 

34 

244 

James 

12 

26 

530 

I  Peter 

12 

30 

534 

II  Peter 

8 

32 

368 

I  John 

13 

27 

573 

II  John 

I 

27 

69 

III  John 

I 

27 

69 

Jude 

3 

27 

153 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  us  on  examining  this  table  is  that  the 
compositions  do  not  end,  as  one  might  suppose,  at  different  points 
of  the  page  according  to  random  distribution,  but  they  show  a 
preference  for  ending  at  particular  points,  and  especially  at  the  27th 
line.  Out  of  the  21  documents  cited,  five  end  on  the  27th  line  of 
the  page,  two  on  the  28th  and  one  on  the  26th.  This  is  very 
remarkable. 

3.  If  the  compositions  were  of  arbitrary  length,  the  probability 
that  five  out  of  the  twenty-one  should  end  on  the  same  particular 
line  is  small  indeed.  Unless  I  am  mistaken,  it  would  be  repre- 
sented by  the  fraction 


21 . 20. 19. 18.  17 

I   .2.3.4.5 


which  is  evidently  much  less  than  ^.-i.-i.^.h  •  k  or  ^ •  ^^^  ^^Y  ^^ 
sure  then  that  the  odds  are  at  least  four  thousand  to  one  against 
such  a  conjunction  of  endings  being  the  work  o{  chance. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  3 

It  is  evident  that  the  eight  compositions  alluded  to,  viz.  II  Corin- 
thians, Galatians,  I  Thessalonians,  James,  the  three  Epistles  of  John, 
and  Jude,  are  each  written  on  an  integral  number  of  sheets  of  a 
given  size ;  and  further,  this  sheet  of  given  size  must  bear  a  pecu- 
liar relation  both  to  the  whole  column  of  the  Vatican  Codex  consist- 
ing of  42  lines,  and  to  the  fractional  column  of  27  lines  ;  for,  otherwise, 
it  would  not  be  possible  for  documents  of  different  length,  even 
though  written  on  sheets  of  given  size,  to  end  at  the  same  place  on 
the  Vatican  page.  If  we  allow  a  line  for  the  subscription  of  those 
Epistles  which  end  at  the  27th  line,  we  have  to  seek  a  submultiple 
of  28  and  42  ;  and  we  at  once  see  that  14  lines  of  the  Vatican  Codex 
bears  some  multiple  proportion  to  the  size  of  a  page  of  the  original 
writing,  and  in  all  probability,  in  the  cases  referred  to,  we  may  say 
that  14  lines  of  the  Vatican  Codex  represents  exactly  the  page  of 
the  autograph,  the  only  submultiples  of  14  being  7  and  2.  This 
provides  us  with  a  unit  upon  which  to  base  our  calculations,  which 
for  convenience  we  will  denominate  a  V-page. 

4.  We  see,  then,  that  of  the  Epistles  especially  referred  to, 

II  Corinthians      =  95  V-pages  exactly. 
Galatians  =  47  V-pages,  wanting  one  line. 

I  Thessalonians  =  32  V-pages  exactly. 
James  ^  38  V-pages,  wanting  two  lines. 

I  John  =41  V-pages,  wanting  one  line. 

TTTT  h     f^^ch   =     5  V-pages,  wanting  one  line. 

Jude  ^11  V-pages,  wanting  one  line. 

With  regard  to  these  conclusions,  the  single  line  left  blank  in  the 
letter  is  probably  left  for  subscription ;  in  the  case  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Galatians  we  have  the  additional  explanation  that  there  was  a 
sentence  in  it  written  in  large  letters  by  the  Apostle  Paul's  own 
hand,  and  when  this  sentence  is  copied  there  is  a  slight  contraction 
in  the  copy  as  compared,  with  the  original. 

With  regard  to  St.  James,  we  find  two  lines  wanting;  either,  , 
therefore,  his  handwriting  is  larger  than  ordinary,  or  we  may  assume 
that  he  actually  left  a  somewhat  larger  blank  space  than  was  usual 
with  the  other  writers,  who  evidently  economized  every  inch  of 
paper.  The  sheet  of  paper,  too,  is  noticeably  a  small  one  ;  it  is  only 
capable  of  containing  14  lines  of  average  length,  about  17  letters 
each :  this  also  is  explicable  by  the  supposition  of  economy,  for 
the  cost  of  a  sheet  of  papyrus  increases  with  the  size  of  a  sheet,  but 


4  NEIV    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

in  a  much  greater  ratio  than  the  sheet,  on  account  of  the  difficulty 
of  finding  plants  or  reeds  of  a  very  great  length  and  section.  We 
can  see,  then,  that  the  cheapest  paper  is  used,  and  no  space  spared. 
Now  turn  to  the  table  again,  and  observing  that  our  manuscript- 
unit  is  fourteen  lines  of  the  Vatican  Codex,  we  see  that  in  the 
autograph 

Philippians  =  33  V-pages  exactly. 

We  come,  then,  to  a  group  of  three  Epistles  which  run  slightly  over 
an  exact  number  of  pages  ;  thus  : 

Romans  occupies  148  V-pages  and  two  lines. 
Colossians  33  V-pages  and  one  line. 

I  Peter  38  V-pages  and  two  lines. 

With  regard  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  it  is  not  inconceivable 
that  in  148  pages  the  copy  should  have  gained  two  lines  on  the 
autograph  ;  the  study  of  the  Epistle  is,  however,  complicated  by  the 
existence  of  important  various  readings,  and  by  the  doubtful  char- 
acter of  its  concluding  portion,  which  seems  rather  to  be  addressed 
to  an  Ephesian  than  a  Roman  community,  and  by  the  questionable 
authenticity  of  its  doxologies.  We  content  ourselves,  for  the  present, 
by  saying  that  the  Epistle,  as  it  stands  in  Codex  B,  probably  repre- 
sents 148  pages  of  the  autograph. 

With  regard  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  the  question  is  more 
simple,  as  the  document  is  shorter.  Four  lines  of  this  Epistle,  at 
least,  are  from  the  hand  of  Paul  himself,  and  would  therefore  be  in 
larger  characters  than  usual ;  this  would  make  the  original  document 
longer  than  33  V-pages  and  one  line.  Either,  therefore,  the  greater 
part  of  a  page  was  left  blank,  which  is  unlikely ;  or  Codex  B  has 
inserted  words  in  the  text,  or  the  amanuensis  of  Paul  (Tychicus, 
Onesimus  ?)  must  have  written  a  smaller  hand  than  was  normal. 

We  leave  the  matter  for  the  present  undecided. 

Similar  remarks  will  apply  to  the  ist  Epistle  of  Peter. 

We  annex  the  2d  Epistle  of  John,  as  we  imagine  it  to  have  stood 
on  the  original  sheets. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Gospels  we  have  a  much  more  difficult 
question  to  examine,  on  account  of  the  multitude  of  various  readings. 
We  shall  simply  remark  that  the  Gospel  of  Luke,  in  Codex  B,  is 
within  a  line  of  the  end  of  a  column,  so  that 

Luke  =  411  V-pages,  wanting  a  single  line. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  5 

In  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  if  we  omit  the  last  verse,  we  find  our- 
selves at  the  end  of  a  page,  and 

John  =  291  V-pages  exactly. 

It  will  have  been  noticed  that  the  number  of  V-pages  occupied 
by  the  documents  discussed  is  more  often  odd  than  even,  which  is 
more  consistent  with  the  hypothesis  of  papyrus  sheets  written  on 
one  side  only,  than  with  the  supposition  of  a  material  capable  of 
being  written  on  both  sides.' 

5.  We  shall  now  turn  our  attention  to  the  Sinaitic  Codex,  which  is 
written  in  columns,  four  to  each  page,  and  in  lines,  48  to  each  column.'^ 
The  difficulty  in  this  case  will  arise  from  the  fact  that  the  lines  of 
the  text  are  not  nearly  so  uniform  as  in  the  Codex  Vaticanus,  and 
in  the  first  two  Gospels  in  particular  the  text  is  broken  up  into 
paragraphs,  and  the  recurrence  of  short  lines,  unless  it  be  a  genea- 
logical feature  of  the  successive  MS,  will  prevent  us  from  tracing 
the  structure  of  the  original  documents.  We  proceed,  however,  to 
form  our  second  table,  constructed  in  the  same  way  as  the  previous 
one,  and  containing  a  larger  collection  of  books.  The  lines  in  this 
manuscript  are  shorter  than  in  B,  by  several  letters. 

'  The  more  delicate  papyri  are  quite  unsuited  to  the  reception  of  writing 
on  both  sides  :  that  species,  in  particular,  which  was  held  in  the  highest 
Roman  estimation,  and  honored  with  the  name  of  Augustus,  was  so  fine  as 
to  be  almost  transparent,  so  that  its  extreme  tenuity  came  to  be  regarded  as 
a  defect. 

For  a  document  to  be  written  on  both  sides  seems  to  be  a  mark  of  the 
poverty  of  the  writer  or  the  over-productiveness  of  his  brain  :  thus  we  find 
in  Juvenal  I  5  : 

"  Summa  pleni  jam  margine  libri 
Scriptus  et  in  tergo,  necdum  finitus  Orestes." 

Lucian,  Vit.  Auct.  9,  represents  Diogenes  as  saying  ?/  iriipa  ^t  cot  depftuv 
eoTCi)  ueary  Kal  oKLadoyfidcbuv  [iip?Juv. 

Scripture  students  will  call  to  mind  an  illustration  of  a  similar  kind  in  the 
Apocalypse,  where  the  plenitude  of  coming  judgments  and  tribulations  is 
represented  by  a  book  or  paper-roll  written  both  outside  and  inside  (Rev. 
Vi). 

^  This  is  not  always  true  ;  in  the  Catholic  epistles  the  scribe  has  frequently 
contented  himself  with  a  column  of  47  lines.  I  do  not  know  whether  this 
peculiarity  has  ever  been  noted.  Scrivener,  in  his  collation  of  the  Sinaitic  MS, 
does  not  seem  to  allude  to  it.  Our  results,  as  given  in  the  table,  must  be  cor- 
rected for  the  aberration  of  the  scribe,  when  we  come  to  analyse  the  documents 
more  closely. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


Table  II. 

Columns 

Lines 

Total  Lines 

Matthew 

139 

I 

6672 

Three  letters  only  in  the  residual  line 

Mark 

85 

4 

4084 

Luke 

149 

24 

7176 

John 

107 

35 

5171 

Acts 

146 

10 

7018 

Romans 

53 

6 

2550 

I  Corinthians 

51 

12 

2460 

II  Corinthians 

35 

6 

1686 

Galatians 

16 

45 

813 

Ephesians 

18 

5 

869 

Phihppians 

12 

9 

585 

Colossians 

12 

13 

589 

I  Thessalonians 

II 

21 

549 

II  Thessalonians 

6 

3 

291 

Hebrews 

40 

24 

1944 

I  Timothy 

13 

40 

664 

II  Timothy 

10 

3 

483 

Titus 

5 

37 

277 

Philemon 

2 

24 

120 

James 

13 

33 

657 

I  Peter 

14 

9 

681 

II  Peter 

9 

24 

456 

I  John 

15 

12 

732 

II  John 

I 

39 

87 

III  John 

I 

39 

87 

Jude 

4 

6 

198 

Revelation 

68 

12 

3276 

Barnabas 

53 

18 

2562 

The  first  thing  we  notice  is  that  the  distribution  of  the  concluding 
lines  of  the  books  is  much  more  varied  and  irregular.  The  only 
thing  that  is  remarkable  is  the  recurrence  of  the  multiples  of  twelve  ; 
three  books  end  at  the  twelfth  line,  viz.  I  Corinthians,  I  John,  Rev- 
elation ;  four  end  on  the  24th  line :  Luke,  Hebrews,  Philemon,  and 
II  Peter ;  the  Gospel  of  John  ends  on  the  35th  line,  which  may 
practically  be  counted  as  the  36th.'     This,  again,  can  hardly  be 

'  It  may  be  asked  why,  in  discussing  this  table,  we  pay  no  attention  to  the 
repetition  of  the  sixth  line  as  an  ending  of  three  books,  nor  to  the  double 
recurrence  of  the  number  three.     I  have  no  theoretical  objection  to  urge 


NEIV    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  7 

accidental ;  we  may  assume  that  in  the  cases  alhided  to,  with  the 
exception  of  the  ist  Epistle  of  John,  which,  on  account  of  the 
irregular  length  of  the  columns,  furnishes  an  accidental  coinci- 
dence, there  is  a  unit  sheet  of  paper  employed,  capable  of  con- 
taining 1 2  lines  of  the  Sinaitic  Codex  ;  we  shall  therefore  have  a 
new  leaf  of  paper,  (for  reference  to  which  we  adopt  the  expression 
S-page,  in  order  to  distinguish  it  from  the  previous  V-page),  by 
means  of  which  to  measure  our  documents. 

With  regard  to  the  comparative  sizes  of  the  two  pages,  it  is 
evident  at  a  glance  that  the  S-page  is  smaller  than  the  V-page,  for  it 
contains  twelve  lines  where  the  other  has  fourteen,  and  has  a  smaller 
number  of  letters  to  the  line. 

6.  We  thus  get  the  key  to  the  method  by  which  the  text  of  the 
papyrus  leaves  was  reduced  into  the  shape  in  which  we  find  it  in  the 
oldest  manuscripts.  Codex  B  selects  the  larger  type  of  page,  and 
arranges  them  nine  on  a  page,  or  three  in  a  side  ;  while  the  Sinaitic 
Codex  selects  the  smaller  leaf,  and  arranges  them  sixteen  on  a  page, 


against  either  of  these  numbers,  seeing  that  they  are  both  submultiples  of 
the  whole  column  of  48  lines ;  but  practically  they  are  too  small  subdi- 
visions,  and  their  recurrence  is  accidental.  The  probability  that  out  of  28 
books,  one  number  should  recur  in  the  line-endings  three  times  (I  do  not 
say  this  time  a  particular  number)  is  represented  by 


48. 


28  .  27  .  26 


(48)  •  (48) 


whose  value  is  nearly  |i. 

It  is  almost  certain,  then,  that  such  an  event  as  the  recurrence  alluded  to 
will  be  found  in  our  table.  Those  who  are  interested  in  observing  these 
recurrences  may  study  the  following  table  from  the  Codex  Sinaiticus  : 

Tobit  ends  on  line     3 

Judith  "  "  23 

Mace.  I  "  "  38 

Mace.  IV  "  "  37 

Isaiah  "  "  14 

Joel  "  "  19 

Obadiah  "  "  28 

Here  every  ending  is  formed  by  random  distribution  (unless  we  except 
the  book  of  Judith  and  the  Maccabees),  for  the  works  referred  to  are  trans- 
lations, and  have  therefore  no  pattern  ;  yet  there  is  a  double  recurrence  of 
the  3,  and  of  the  38  with  its  submultiple  19.  These  are,  of  course,  purely 
accidental.  The  recurrence  would  have  to  be  more  frequent  before  we 
should  notice  it,  or  look  for  any  concealed  cause  at  work  to  produce  such  a 
result. 


Jonah 

ends 

on  line  45 

Nahum 

15 

Habakkuk 

"        21 

Zephaniah 

16 

Haggai 

3 

Zachariah 

"       38 

Malachi 

"        20 

8  NEW    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

four  in  a  side.  And  it  is  this  arrangement  which  Eusebius  '  de- 
scribes when  he  says  that  the  accurate  MSS,  prepared  by  order 
of  Constantine,  were  written  Tpia-ara  koI  Terpaaa-d ;  t.  e.  as  we  should 
say,  in  a  square  whose  side  is  three,  or  in  a  square  whose  side  is 
four.     The  V-pages,  then,   are  arranged  Tpia-a-d,  and  the  S-pages 

TfTpaaa-'i. 

7.  Now,  examining  our  second  table,  we  see  at  once  that  the 
Sinaitic  Codex  gives 

Gospel  of  Matthew  =  556  S-pages,  and  three  letters. 
Gospel  of  Luke        =  598  S-pages. 

I  Corinthians  =  205  S-pages  exactly. 
Hebrews  =  162       "  ■ 
Philemon                   ^10       "  " 

II  Peter  =    38 
Revelation                 =:  273       "  " 

We  may  perhaps  conjecture  that  Titus  should  be  added  to  the 
list,  as  containing  23  S-pages  and  one  line  ;  while  the  Epistle  to  the 
Colossians  is  again  doubtful,  comprising  49  leaves  and  one  line. 
We  have  thus  deduced  the  type  of  almost  all  the  Epistles,  some 
of  them  with  great  exactness ;  and  we  observe  that  they  fall  into 
two  groups,  with  the  exception  of  some  four  or  five  Epistles,  which 
either  are  not  written  so  as  to  fill  the  paper,  or  are  written  on  paper 
of  a  different  size  to  the  two  sorts  we  have  been  considering,  or  on 
a  different  pattern. 

8.  When  we  turn  to  the  Gospels  we  have  a  harder  problem  to 
solve,  but  I  think  we  may  say  that  if  the  two  principal  types  of  the 
early  MSS  are  those  indicated  as  rpia-a-a  and  rerpaaa-d,  then  it  is  far 
more  likely  that  those  types  were  found  in  the  Gospels  than  that  they 
were  merely  adopted  from  the  Epistles.  We  may  therefore  expect 
to  find  some  of  the  Gospels  written  rpia-ad  and  some  Terpacra-d,  or 
rather  some  on  the  V-page  and  some  on  the  S-page.  The  question 
is,  how  shall  we  determine  the  type  of  the  autograph  for  any  par- 
ticular Gospel  ?  And  here  an  important  remark  must  be  made.  I 
am  aware  that  every  one  of  these  results  and  suggestions  is  subject 
to  a  disturbing  factor  of  the  greatest  moment,  viz.  the  question  of 
various  readings  in  the  text,  and  of  accidental  omissions  or  insertions 
of  passages  or  lines  in  the  great  Codices.  The  disturbance  will  be 
most  to  be  apprehended  in  the  case  of  the  longer  compositions,  and 
with  regard  to  these  all  our  results  must  be  looked  upon  at  first  as 

'  Eusebius,  Vit.  Const.  IV  37. 


NE]V    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


tentative.  But  in  the  smaller  writings  the  various  readings  are  gen- 
erally so  few  and  unimportant  that  the  majority  of  our  results  may 
be  regarded  as  unaffected  by  them.  We  will,  however,  examine  the 
effect  of  these  various  readings  in  each  of  the  separate  books.  It 
is  the  more  important  to  do  this  carefully,  because  the  Sinaitic  and 
Vatican  Codices  are  known  to  contain  a  number  of  apparent  inser- 
tions and  omissions  and  repetitions,  which  have  been  held  up  by  a 
certain  school  as  convincing  proof  of  their  unreliable  character  as 
witnesses  to  the  text  of  the  New  Testament. 

Dr.  Dobbin  gave  in  the  Dublin  University  Magazine  for  Novem- 
ber, 1859,  a  calculation  of  the  omissions  of  Codex  B  in  the  different 
books  of  the  New  Testament,  in  which  we  find  for 


Matthew 

330  omissions. 

Jude 

1 1  omissions 

Mark 

365 

Romans 

106          " 

Luke 

439 

I  Cor. 

146          " 

John 

357 

II  Cor. 

74 

Acts 

384 

Gal. 

37 

James 

41 

Eph. 

53 

I  Peter 

46 

Philip. 

21 

II  Peter 

20 

Coloss. 

36 

I  John 

16 

I  Thess. 

21          " 

II  John 

3 

II  Thess. 

10          " 

III  John 

2 

An  appalling  table,  certainly,  and  one  which,  if  we  did  not  remem- 
ber that  the  figures  are  the  result  of  a  collation  with  the  Textus 
Receptus,  and  that  the  majority  of  them  refer  to  wholly  insignificant 
readings,  would  almost  make  us  despair  of  finding  in  the  Vatican 
or  Sinaitic  MSS  any  traces  of  the  original  style  and  size  of  the  books 
of  the  New  Testament.  We  will,  however,  discuss  any  important 
readings  that  may  occur,  and  after  having  first  carefully  dissected 
the  text  of  St.  John,  and  examined  the  bearing,  of  our  investigation 
upon  the  stichometry  of  the  New  Testament,  we  will  proceed  to 
the  Epistles,  beginning  with  the  smaller  ones,  and  so  working  up  to 
the  longer  Epistles,  the  Acts  and  the  Gospels.  And  no  result  of 
the  previous  tentative  examination  is  to  be  allowed  to  pass  unchal- 
lenged or  unverified. 

9.  We  begin  with  the  Gospel  according  to  John.  In  the  Vatican 
Codex  this  occupies  97  columns  and  six  lines.  In  the  Sinaitic 
Codex  it  occupies  107  columns  and  35  lines.  At  first  sight,  there- 
fore, it  seems  that  the  Gospel  is  written  on  the  S-page,  with  only  a 


lO  NJilV   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

deficiency  of  one  line  from  a  total  of  431  S-pages.  But  here  comes 
in  the  question  of  the  last  verse  of  the  Gospel,  which  Tischendorf 
observed  to  be  written  in  the  Sinaitic  MSS  by  a  different  hand,  and 
many  scholia  to  different  MSS  affirm  to  be  an  addition.  Removing 
this  verse,  eight  lines  of  the  Codex,  the  S-page  is  of  course  no  longer 
apparent.  But  strange  to  say,  when  the  verse  is  also  removed  from 
Codex  B,  in  which  it  occupies  six  lines  at  the  top  of  a  page,  we  are 
left  with  a  Gospel  terminating  at  the  end  of  a  page,  and  in  our 
notation  occupying  exactly  291  V-pages.  The  Gospel  of  John  is, 
therefore,  probably  written  on  the  V-page,  and  the  apparent  contra- 
diction of  this  statement  by  the  Sinaitic  Codex  may  be  due  to  the  fact 
that  in  the  type  of  MSS  which  that  Codex  has  been  following  some 
one  has  utilized  part  of  the  blank  space  at  the  latter  half  of  a  column 
for  the  insertion  of  a  sentence  as  to  the  number  of  books  that  might 
have  been  written.  The  addition  must  have  been  earlier  than 
the  age  of  vellum  MSS,  and  may  have  arisen  in  the  transcription 
of  the  Gospel  of  John  from  the  larger-sized  paper  to  the  smaller, 
since  it  nearly  fills  the  blank  in  a  smaller  sheet,  and  that  sheet  not 
the  lowest  in  a  Sinaitic  column. 

10.  This  conclusion  with  regard  to  the  autograph  of  St.  John  leads 
to  very  important  consequences  with  regard  to  the  celebrated  peri- 
cope  of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery.  An  examination  of  this 
passage  shows  that  there  are  908  letters  either  inserted  in  the 
text  or  dropped  from  it.  Now  the  average  number  of  letters  to  the 
line  in  St.  John's  Gospel  in  the  Codex  Vaticanus  is  16.4,  from 
whence  we  conclude  that  the  passage  in  question  is  equi\'alent  to 
about  56  lines  of  Codex  B,  i.  e.  to  four  V-pages  exactly.  Now  it 
is  obvious  that  four  such  pages  could  not  by  any  possibility  have 
been  excised  from  a  document  in  which  the  V-pages  are  arranged 
nine  in  a  square.  They  must,  therefore,  have  been  lost  from  the 
original  document  before  it  came  into  the  shape  represented  by 
Codex  B.  Their  reinsertion  has  been  characterized  by  great  awk- 
wardness in  later  manuscripts,  and  breaks  the  continuity  of  the 
narrative.  They  have  been,  in  fact,  restored  to  a  place  which  they 
did  not  previously  occupy. 

Before  going  further  we  insert  a  reproduction  of  the  four  pages 
which  we  have  reason  to  believe  the  lost  passage  to  have  occupied. 

As  a  restoration  of  the  text  of  B,  it  is  not  quite  a  successful  effort. 
I  have  not,  I  find,  done  justice  to  the  syllabic  division  followed  by 
the  scribe,  who  has  a  distinct  custom  in  ending  his  lines  and  dividing 
his  words,  and  prefers,  if  possible,  to  write  a  seven-syllabled  line. 


^'-ff^ 


KAieiTopeyQHC&Ns  ka 

CTOCe/C  TO  NO  I  KON&yT 

oyicAesTTopeySHe  icro 

OpoCTWfMeAAICONOpfl 

poYAeTr«i,AiNTTAPer 
eiMeToeicToiepoNKA 

ITTACOAAOCHPyerOTT 
poCAyrONKAIKAOlCA 

ceAiAAC  KeN/^Y'TOY 
cApoyciNAeoirpAM 

MATeiC  KA  lOIC^A  pic 
AlOipYNAIKAerriMOl 
)(eiAKATeiAHMMe  NH 
NKAICTHCANTeCAyTH 


NGNA^eccoAepoyc  i  Nd, 

yTCOAlAACKAAe  A  yTH 
HpYI^HKATe  iAhUT 

iX  I  err  A  Y  To<^  CO  pwMo  I )( 
eYOMSNHeN  AercoNo 

/AOOH/^INAAmYCHCeNe 
rei  AATOTACTOI  AYT 

iXcAiSazs  I  NC Y^Y 
NTiAereicTOY  to  A 
eeAeroNTTeipAzoN 
Tec  AY TON  I N Aeyfflc 

I N  K  AT  H  po  p  e  ( N  AvY  "I" 
OYOAe  IC  K  ATCOKy  "f  <>^ 
CTCOAAK  TYACOKATep 


pAcbeNeiCTMNpH  NQ 

c  A  e  e  TT  e /^  6  N  o  N  6  p  o 

TOJNTeC  AyTON  ANe  K 

YfeNKAieiTTGNAyTO 

ICO  ANA/^  ApTH  TOCy 

A\aiN1TpuTOCAl9oNe 

TTAYTHNBAAeTCJK.A 

mAAINKATCJKYt'^^ 

eppAcbeNeicTHN  pn 

N0lAe<XKOYCA^NTGC 
e?Hpj{ONTOe  I  C  K(X 

Qeic  ApiiXMe  N  o  I  ATT 
OTcoNirpecBYTepwN 

e  CO  CTCO  N  e  C  ¥  A  TCO  N  K  A 


IKATeAe  lc|3yH/v\ONOCO 
fc  KA  I  H  p  Y  '"J  "  ^  NM  e  C  60 
OYCAANAKY^fACAe  O 
ICK<XIAAHAeNA9eAC 
A/AeNOClTAHNTHCp 

YNAi  KOceiTTeNAy 

THpyNAITTOYeiCIN 
GKeiNOIGIKATHpopO 

icoyoyAeicceKATe 
Kpi  NGN  HA6  eiTreNOYA 
eicKYpieeirreNAeoic 
oYAeepcoc  e  K  ATA  Kp 

IN  COTTO  p  6  Y  O  Y  K  ^^  I  ^ '-' 
KGTI  AMA  pT  AN  6 


T^l 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  H 

Moreover,  some  of  the  most  capriciously  concluded  lines  are  meant 
to  be  syllabically.  divided,  such  as  those  which  end  with  ov  and  leave 
the  K  of  the  oW  to  be  carried  to  the  next  line.  This  division  occurs 
so  frequently  that  it  is  evident  that  the  scribe,  in  writing  such  words 
as  ovK  eariv,  really  regards  the  k  as  a  sort  of  prefix  to  the  verb. 

We  may  now  proceed  to  determine  the  place  where  the  celebrated 
pericope  should  be  reinserted.  Turning  to  the  end  of  the  fifth  chap- 
ter, we  find  that  it  closes  with  the  words  :  "  There  is  one  that  accuseth 
you,  even  Moses  on  whom  ye  trust.  For  if  ye  had  believed  Moses, 
ye  would  have  believed  me  ;  but  if  ye  do  not  believe  his  writings,  how 
can  ye  believe  my  words  ?  "  The  scene  then  changes  abruptly  to 
Galilee:  "After  these  things  Jesus  departed  to  the  other  side  of 
the  sea  of  Galilee  from  Tiberias."  It  is  between  these  chapters  that 
I  would  locate  the  pericope.  The  fifth  chapter  narrates  how  Jesus 
found  in  the  temple  the  man  whom  he  had  healed  at  the  pool  of 
Bethesda ;  it  describes  the  long  subsequent  discussion  with  the 
Pharisees,  which  must  have  taken  nearly  all  day,  after  which  they 
depart,  each  man  to  his  own  house,  but  Jesus  to  the  Mount  of 
Olives.  Appropriately  the  Pharisees  bring  him  next  morning  the 
woman  for  judgment,  with  the  remark  that  "  Moses  in  the  law  said 
.  .  .  but  what  say  est  thou  ?  "  Codex  D,  which  gives  the  pericope 
in  somewhat  shorter  form,  is  even  more  forcible,  n'  Be  vdv  Xeyeis ;  we 
conclude,  then,  that  this  is  a  far  more  likely  place  to  locate  the 
pericope  than  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  chapter. 

This  readjustment  of  the  text  at  once  removes  many  of  the 
objections  urged  against  its  authenticity,  and  it  also  helps  to  fill  up 
that  unsightly  chasm  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  chapter.  It  is  unne- 
cessary to  discuss  in  detail  the  objections  which  had  been  raised  by 
critics  to  the  passage  as  it  originally  stood,  but  we  will  quote  a 
single  one  out  of  many  difficulties  urged,  as  given  by  Davidson  in 
his  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament,  I  363.  He  says :  "  The 
greatest  perplexity  connected  with  the  passage  lies  in  the  reason 
for  bringing  the  case  before  Jesus.  No  adequate  motive  appears 
to  induce  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  to  employ  this  woman  for  the 
purpose  of  embarrassing  the  Redeemer,  and  thence  extracting  a 
ground  of  accusation  against  him.  It  is  evident  that  they  wished 
to  entrap  him  ;  the  narrative  itself  states  that  they  tempted  him  in 
order  to  procure  a  tangible  charge,  but  how  they  expected  to  do 
so  by  means  of  the  adulteress  is  exceedingly  obscure."  I  hope 
the  obscurity  disappears  in  the  new  arrangement  of  the  text,  and 


12  NEW    lliSTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

that  the  passage  is  more  harmoniously  placed  with  regard  to  the 
context  than  previously. 

Moreover  there  is  this  difficulty,  that  in  the  ordinary  supposition 
these  lost  V-pages  would  begin  four  lines  from  the  top  of  the  page, 
and  we  should  have  to  assume  that  Codex  B  had  either  added 
four  lines  to  the  autograph,  or  lost  ten  lines  in  the  first  seven  chap- 
ters, before  we  could  rectify  the  pages  so  as  to  reintroduce  the  lost 
columns  of  the  papyrus.  Neither  of  these  suppositions  seems  likely, 
as  the  text  of  John  in  these  chapters  is  remarkably  good,  and  the 
text  of  B  is  more  likely  to  be  marked  by  omissions  than  insertions. 

On  our  hypothesis  they  .begin  on  the  last  line  of  the  left-hand 
column  of  the  page,  and  we  have  only  to  assume  that  a  single  line  has 
been  lost  from  Codex  B  in  the  first  five  chapters.  We  proceed  to  go 
in  search  of  this  lost  line.  The  Gospel  of  John  in  B  has  comparatively 
few  various  readings  in  the  shape  of  insertions  or  omissions.  The 
majority  of  them  consist  of  transpositions  and  changes  of  rierely 
verbal  importance.  We  proceed  to  tabulate  those  of  them  which 
affect  our  enquiry,  from  the  principal  editors  and  MSS. 


Letters 

Text.  Ret 

N 

B. 

W.H. 

r.       Tr. 

I    5. 

ru>v  dvdpcoTTCov 

II 

+ 

+ 

— 

H- 

+       + 

I  13- 

oiiSe  €K  deXrifxaros  avdpos 

r       21 

+ 

+ 

— 

+ 

+       + 

I  27. 

OS  efXTvpoadev    .    .    . 

21 

+ 

— 

— 

— 



II    2. 

A  long  variant  in  the  Sinaitic,  but 

very 

'  doubtful 

Ill  13. 

6  U3V  fV  TW  ovpavu) 

13 

+ 

+ 

— 

— 

+       + 

Ill  31. 

ilTUVU)    TTcivTCOV    ((TTIV 

16 

+ 

— 

+ 

+ 

-       + 

IV    9. 

oil  yap  avv)(putVTai    .    .    . 

.     34 

+ 

— 

^- 

+ 

+        + 

IV  14. 

ov  pfj  8i\f/ija7]    .    .    . 

40 

+ 

+ 

+ 

+ 

+       + 

V   12. 

TOV    KpaficlTTOV    GOV 

15 

+ 

+ 

— 

— 

-[-f] 

V  16. 

Kai  e^iiTovv    .    .    . 

25 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

—       

V  45.   vpos  TOV  irarepa  repeated  13       —       —     -|-     —    —    — 

Reviewing  the  variants  of  the  text  of  B  thus  far,  we  find  four  cases 
of  probable  omission,  and  two  of  insertion.  If  we  allow  that  B  is 
right  in  omitting  t6v  Kpa^arTov  a-ov,  the  result  is  a  balance  of  a  line 
to  be  added,  which  suits  our  case  exactly. 

II.  We  must  now  examine  the  remainder  of  the  Gospel  in  the 
same  manner. 


VI  II. 

roi?  padrjTOLS    .    .    . 

23 

+ 



—       

VI   22. 

eKfivo  els  6   .    .    . 

27 

+ 

+       - 

—      —      — 

VII  30. 

ayiov  BeSopevov 

14 

+ 

—      — 

[  +  ] 

VII  46. 

COS    OVTOS    6    avdpMTTOS 

16 

+ 

+       - 

-      +[+] 

NEW    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  13 

VIII  52.    B  reads  incorrectly,  but  the  passage  is  of  the  same  length 

as  the  ordinary  reading. 
VIII  59.    hie\6i^v  ...  34       -j-       —     —     —     —     — 

IX    7.    B  has  dropped  a  line  by  6fioi^Ti\evTov. 

IX  36.    an,Kpi6n  ...  23     ■  -f-       +     —   [-f  ]   -f     4- 

X   13.  Ta  TTpafiaTa    ...  26  -|-  ■ —  —  —  

X  26.  Kaduis  fiTTOv  v[uv  14  ~|~  —  —  —  —  — 

XI  40.  ov  fju  6  TedvrjKw  21  -|-  —  —  —  —  — 

XIII   10.  el  fxr)  Tovs  TToSas  13  +  —  +  L~\~l  —  4" 

XIII  14.    B  repeats  two  lines  and  a  half. 
XIII  24.    B  has  a  slightly  longer  reading. 

XIII  32.    el  6  0e6i  ...  21        +       —     —     —     +[+] 

XIV  4.  Kill-  olBcire  9  I  —  —  —  —  — 
XIV  5.  Svpcifieda  8  -j-  -f  —  —  —  — 
XVI   16.     oTi  VTvayoi    ...                         21          -|-         —      —      —      —      — 

XVII  15.    (/<)oo-/ioua\Xa... omitted 35       -|-       -j"     —     H"     +     -f- 

XVII   18.     Kayio  aTrea-reiXa  repeated  31  —         —      -\-      —      —      — 

The  total  result  of  our  examination  of  this  passage  is  that  perhaps 
one  or  two  lines  might  be  added  to  the  text  of  B,  but  the  text  has 
repeated  more  than  five  lines  and  dropped  only  three,  so  the  total 
result  is  hardly  affected. 

It  will  be  seen  that  we  have  made  no  allusion  to  the  account  of 
the  troubling  of  the  waters  at  Bethesda,  which  does  not  occupy  a 
distinct  number  of  V-pages. 

But  we  must  not  altogether  pass  the  passage  by,  for  it  enables 
us  to  see  why  the  pericope  de  adu/^era  came  to  be  inserted  in  the 
wrong  place.  There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  gloss  in  ques- 
tion is  very  early,  seeing  that  we  find  a  striking  reference  to  it  in 
Tertullian,  De  Baptism.  9.  Written  on  the  V-pattern,  the  passage 
John  V  3,  4  would  occupy  about  10  lines  of  manuscript.  Bearing 
in  mind  that  the  passage  to  which  the  pericope  de  adidicra  has 
been  wrongly  restored  is  four  lines  from  the  beginning  of  a  column, 
and  adding  the  gloss  on  the  Troubling  of  the  Water  to  the  fifth 
chapter,  we  have  now  moved  the  inserted  pericope  to  the  beginning 
of  a  V-page.  Each  of  the  three  errors,  viz.  the  omission  of  the 
pericope,  its  reinsertion,  and  the  insertion  of  the  gloss  in  chapter 
V,  is  therefore  anterior  to  the  age  of  vellum  manuscripts,  and  we 
can  even  arrange  the  errors  in  their  proper  chronological  order. 
Perhaps  we  ought  to  have  added  that  in  the  same  interval  of  time 
a  balance  of  a  single  line  was  lost  from  the  first  five  chapters  of  B. 


14  NEW    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

The  majority  of  the  errors  are  of  the  V-type,  that  is,  there 
are  more  V-Hnes  than  S-hnes  inserted  or  omitted.  And  this  is 
just  what  we  should  expect,  if  the  MSS  were  originally  of  the 
V-pattern ;  and  we  may  jlay  down  the  following  general  prin- 
ciple :  A  manuscript  originally  written  on  a  certain  pattern  will 
generally  show  a  majority  of  errors  of  the  pattern  on  which  it  is 
written.  The  advantage  of  this  proposition  is  that  it  will  help  us 
to  determine  the  original  character  of  a  MS,  whether  the  MS  occupy 
an  exact  number  of  pages  of  its  pattern  or  not.  We  are  now  in  the 
position  to  print  the  Gospel  of  John,  approximately,  from  the  origi- 
nal sheets. 

No  one  can  study  the  Gospel  carefully  without  noticing  the  dis- 
continuity of  many  of  its  sequences.  The  probability  is  that  some 
passages  are  still  lost  from  the  500  original  sheets  of  the  Gospel. 

12.  Now  let  us  turn  to  the  close  of  the  Gospel  and  examine  the 
endings  of  the  20th  and  2  ist  chapters  :  the  similarity  of  the  30th  verse 
of  the  20th  chapter  to  the  last  verse  of  the  21st  chapter  is  unmistak- 
able. The  Gospel  has  apparently  two  endings.  And  here  comes  in 
the  remarkable  fact  that  Tertullian  calls  the  30th  verse  of  the  20th 
chapter  the  close  of  the  Gospel,  although  he  quotes  from  the  21st 
chapter  in  at  least  two  places :  "  Ipsa  quoque  clausula  Evangelii 
propter  quid  consignat  haec  scripta,  nisi,  ut  credatis,  inquit  lesum 
Christum  filium  Dei?"'  The  proper  place  for  the  two  closing 
verses  of  the  20th  chapter  is  most  likely  at  the  end  of  the  21st 
chapter. 

For  the  expression  that  there  were  "  many  other  signs  not  recorded 
which  Jesus  wrought  "  implies  (just  as  the  expression  "  I  had  many 
things  to  write  to  you  "  in  the  II  and  III  of  John)  an  insufficiency 
of  writing  material ;  we  are  close  to  the  end  of  the  roll  of  paper. 

In  the  next  place,  the  restoration  of  the  closing  verses  of  the  20th 
chapter  to  the  end  of  the  21st  is  strikingly  harmonious  with  the 
introduction  of  the  Gospel,  to  which  it  returns  as  a  keynote,  and 
with  the  24th  verse  of  the  21st  chapter  which  precedes  it. 

And  thirdly  there  is  room  for  a  single  conjectural  emendation 
which  adds  vividness  to  the  narrative.  In  XXI  30,  after  evamov 
Tcov  fiadrjTcov,  many  important  MSS,  especially  those  which  exhibit  a 
Western  text,  insert  airov.  It  is  a  lawful  suggestion  that  the  original 
reading  was  simply  iva>Tviov  uvtov,  which  was  altered  as  soon  as  the 
verse  had  become  severed  from  its  proper  connection. 

'  Tertullian,  Adv.  Praxeam,  25. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


15 


The  Gospel  now  closes  as  follows : 

ovTOi  icrriv  6  jj-adrfTris  6  fiaprvpav  Trepi  tovtcov 
Koi  6  ypdyj^as  ravra,  koL  ol'Sa/iei'  on  dXrjdqs 
aiiTov  fj  fiapTvpia  icrrlv  '   iroWa  fxev  oiiv  Ka\  aK\a 
crrjfieia  eTTOiTjaev  6    Ir](Tovs  evaiTrtov  avTov  a  ovk 
i'rmv  yeypiifxpeva  ii>  T<a  /3t/3Xia)  tovtco  '   ravra  8e 
yiypanraL  tva  nKrrfvrjre  on    Irjcrovs  eartv  6  Xpicrros 
6  vlos  rov  Qeov  Kal  iva  TfiarevovTes  C^rjv 
eXT''^  ^^  ■'"'?  ov6p.aTi  avrov. 

13.  We  now  proceed  to  state  the  further  results  at  which  we  have 
arrived  for  the  several  books  of  the  New  Testament,  postponing 
the  critical  details  to  a  subsequent  page.  It  will  be  convenient  to 
tabulate,  as  far  as  possible,  the  whole  of  the  results  in  a  form  suitable 
to  a  critical  comparison. 


Table 

III. 

SlNAITIC 

Col.    Line  Total 

Vatican. 

> 
0 
in 

a 

s  s 

3   fcO 
C  a 

^^ 

0 

u 

i4  ^ 

If 

4)    0    '" 

a  u   - 
—>-.(/) 

T   ^-   c 

>  8.2 

0  3.i2 

•s  c  ° 

> 

Col. 

Line 

Total 

^ 

Matthew 

139 

I 

6672 

127 

9 

5343 

1.249 

13.2. 

Mark 

85 

4 

4084 

77 

31 

3265 

1.250 

13.0. 

Luke 

149 

24 

7176 

136 

41 

5753 

s 

600 

600 

1.247 

13.6 

John 

107 

35 

517I 

97 

6 

4080 

V 

29s 

300 

1.267 

133 

Acts 

146 

10 

7018 

130 

3 

5463 

s 

578 

600 

1.284 

I  Thess. 

II 

21 

549 

10 

28 

448 

sv 

46 

32 

50 

1.225 

11  Thess. 

6 

3 

291 

5 

34 

244 

s 

24 

1. 192 

I  Corinthians 

51 

12 

2460 

46 

6 

1938 

s 

205 

1.269 

II  Corinthians 

35 

6 

1686 

31 

28 

133° 

V 

95 

100 

1.267 

Galatians 

16 

45 

813 

15 

27 

657 

V 

47 

so 

1.236 

Romans 

53 

6 

2550 

49 

16 

2074 

V 

147 

150 

1.229 

Ephesians 

j8 

5 

869 

16 

22 

694 

s 

73 

1.252 

Philippians 

12 

9 

585 

II 

0 

462 

sv 

49 

33 

50 

1.266 

Colossians 

12 

13 

589 

11 

IS 

477 

s 

49 

5° 

1.232 

Philemon 

2 

24 

120 

s 

10 

I  Tim. 

13 

40 

664 

II  Tim. 

10 

3 

483 

Titus 

5 

37 

277 

Hebrews 

40 

24 

1944 

James 

13 

33 

657 

12 

26 

530 

V 

38 

40 

1.237 

1  Peter 

14 

9 

68 1 

12 

30 

534 

s 

57 

60 

1-275 

II  Peter 

9 

24 

456 

8 

32 

368 

s 

38 

40 

1-239 

I  John 

15 

12 

732 

13 

27 

573 

V 

41 

1.277 

II  John 

I 

39 

87 

I 

27 

69 

V 

5 

1.260 

III  John 

I 

39 

87 

I 

27 

69 

V 

5 

1.260 

Jude 

4 

6 

198 

3 

27 

153 

V 

II 

1.294 

Revelation 

68 

12 

3276 

s? 

273 

V 

16.8 

16.4 

16.5 

16.7 


16.4 
16  s 

15.2 


l6  NEIV  TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

We  have,  on  the  basis  of  the  previous  investigation,  constructed 
a  column  in  the  table  showing  the  ratio  of  the  V-line  to  the  S-line 
for  different  books. 

If  a  book  contain  in  lines  in  the  Sinaitic  and  n  in  the  Vatican 
Codex,  we  have,  other  things  being  equal,  mS  =  nV ,  or 

S  71 

where  V  and  S  represent  the  V-  and  S-line  respectively.  But  this 
ratio  must  be  corrected  for  omissions  and  insertions  ;  if,  for  example, 

B  omits  g  lines  of  the  original,  the  ratio  ought  to  be  ■ — -. — ,  or  it  is 

diminished  in  the  ratio  n:n-\-  g,  or  giving  p  either  sign,  and 
reserving  the  -f-  sign  for  omissions,  the  ratio  is  altered  by  the  frac- 
tion   .     Similarly,  if  the  Sinaitic  Codex  omits  p  lines,  the  ratio 

is  altered  by ^  .     Change  in  the  style  of  a  writer  will  also  affect 

tn 

the  number  of  lines,  etc.,  but  at  any  rate  we  can  see  that,  as  a  gen- 
eral rule,  books  ivritten  in  the  same  style  and  by  the  same  author 
ivill  be  similarly  affected  by  the  processes  of  transcription. 
.Referring  to  our  table  we  have  ratios  as  follows ; 

John  1.267  I  John  1.277 

II  John  1.260  III  John  1.260 

results  so  nearly  coincident  that  they  suggest  the  same  hand  in 
the  original  documents. 

But  this  remark  must  not  be  unduly  pressed  ;  for,  strictly  speak- 
ing, if  any  book  is  written  out  on  the  same  two  given  patterns,  the 

ratio  of  the  lines  is  fixed,  for  V  and  S  are  fixed,  and  —  =  -^  . 

n         S 

Hence,  when  the  text  has  been  corrected,  the  column  of  ratios 
ought  to  be  the  same  for  all  books.  And  the  normal  value  of  the 
ratio,  if  we  allow  36  letters  to  the  V-type  for  28  to  the  S-type, 
is  f,  or  1.285.  The  first  use  of  this  table  is  to  show,  or  rather 
suggest,  omissions  or  insertions  in  a  codex.  When  these  are  cor- 
rected for,  there  remains  a  residual  effect  upon  the  ratio  produced 
by  the  variation  in  the  hand  of  a  scribe,  induced  by  his  copy  being 
somewhat  different  from  his  normal  style.  And  this  residual  effect 
may  perhaps  help  us  to  classify  the  scribes  of  the  different  books. 

We  have  grouped  the  Pauline  Epistles  in  chronological  order, 
and  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  those  Epistles  written  at  the 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  1 7 

same  time  show  traces  of  being  written  in  the  same  manner.  Thus 
Galatians  and  Romans  are  both  written  on  the  V-page ;  between 
them  they  occupy  200  sheets  of  paper. 

Ephesians,  Philippians,  Colossians,  and  Philemon  are  all  written 
on  the  S-page  (unless  we  must  except  Philippians).  And  the  four 
Epistles  together  occupy  200  sheets  of  paper.  The  three  pastoral 
Epistles  show  traces  of  being  written  in  the  same  style,  but  we  have 
not  been  able  to  identify  it.  The  two  Epistles  of  Peter  agree  in 
this,  that  they  are  both  written  on  the  S-page. 

B.  I.  The  resolution  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  into  two 
main  groups,  characterized  as  the  S-type  and  V-type  respectively, 
has  an  important  bearing  upon  the  stichometry  of  the  New 
Testament. 

Professor  Gildersleeve  has  drawn  my  attention  to  the  analysis 
by  which  M.  Ch.  Graux  showed  in  the  Revue  de  Philologie  for 
April,  1878,  that  the  (ttLxos,  both  in  sacred  and  profane  writers,  rep- 
resented not  a  verse,  nor  a  clause,  nor  sentence,  but  a  fixed  quan- 
tity of  writing.  Evidence  is  offered  in  this  article  that  copyists  were 
paid  at  a  fixed  legal  rate  per  100  lines.  Such  a  law  would  have  been 
vain  and  illusory  if  early  and  constant  tradition  had  not  established 
what  was  to  be  understood  by  the  length  of  the  line.  M.  Graux 
estimates  as  nearly  as  possible  the  number  of  letters  contained  in  a 
given  work  of  some  sacred  or  profane  author,  and  divides  this 
number  by  the  number  of  o-rt^ot  which  the  manuscript  of  the  work 
declares  it  to  contain.  The  results  at  which  he  arrives  are  very 
remarkable,  being  almost  all  of  them  included  between  35  and  38 
letters  to  the  (xtixo^.  From  50  consecutive  lines  in  the  Iliad  opened 
at  random,  he  deduces  that  the  average  Homeric  line  contains 
37.7  letters. 

The  significance  of  these  results  can  hardly  be  mistaken :  they 
imply  that  the  ar'ixo^  is  equivalent  to  the  Homeric  line.  Now  if 
we  apply  this  result  of  M.  Graux  to  the  case  of  the  Codex  Vati- 
canus,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  two  lines 
of  the  Codex  Vaticanus  aie  meant  to  represent  the  same  quantity  ; 
we  have  found  by  selecting  25  lines  at  random  in  Codex  B  that 
the  average  lor  a  single  line  is  nearly  17  letters;  twq-  such  lines 
come  very  near  to  the  average  obtained  by  M.  Graux.  But  if  this 
be  correct,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  much  shorter  lines  of  the 
Sinaitic  Codex  ?  We  arc  inclined  to  believe  that  they  represent 
the  half  of  an  iambic  line.     Taking  the  average  of  25  lines  from 


1 8  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

the  Medea  of  Euripides,  we  have  29.96  letters  ;  but  we  have 
already  found  for  the  Codex  Sinaiticus  the  number  of  letters  to 
be  nearly  14,  which  is  not  far  from  the  half  of  the  iambic  line. 
These  must  therefore  be  two  of  the  principal  types  of  writing- 
employed  both  before  and  after  the  time  of  the  composition  of  the 
books  of  the  New  Testament :  and  these  are  the  two  principal 
types  employed  in  the  New  Testament.  The  origin  of  what  we 
have  called  the  S-page  and  V-page  respectively  is  therefore  to  be 
lound  in  the  iambic  and  hexameter  lines. 

These  results  admit  of  a  very  simple   test.     In  the  Epistle  of 
James,  I  17,  we  have  an  almost  perfect  hexameter: 

TTCKTa  docris  ayuOrj  Koi  irav  8a>pT]fia  reXeiov. 

Now  this  occupies  exactly  two  lines  in  Codex  B,  as  the  following 
transcript  will  show : 

nASAAO 

SISArAGHKAinANAfi 

PHMATEAEIONANQGEN 

In  the  same  way  the  iambic  which  St.  Paul  quotes  in  I  Cor.  XV 
34  from  Menander : 

<f)6€lpovcnv  f]6r)  xprjaTO.  o/xtXi'at  KOKai, 

is  exactly  two  lines  in  the  Sinaitic  Codex. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  our  lines,  as  a  general  rule,  fall  a  little  short 
of  the  average  hexameter  and  iambic.  The  reason  for  this  lies  in  the 
fact  that  a  scribe  paid  at  so  much  a  hundred  lines,  when  copying 
some  other  work  than  Homer,  selected  a  short  line  of  Homer  for  his 
pattern.  By  this  means  the  conventional  arixos  is  a  little  smaller. 
These  o-tIxoi  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  divisions  of  the  text 
made  by  Euthalius,  an  Alexandrian  deacon;  in  the  fifth  century, 
which  does  not  proceed  by  letters,  but  apparently  by  words  and 
sentences. 

2.  The  allusion  which  we  have  made  to  the  existence  of  an 
iambic  a-rixos  explains  a  difficulty  in  Josephus.  At  the  close  of 
the  Jewish  Antiquities  the  writer  says,  'Enl  tovtois  re  KaraTrdvcro)  rfjv 

dpxaioXoyiav,  ^i/3Xots  fih   e'lKoai  TrepLeiXrjiJ-fitVJjv,   e^  de   fiupida-t.   aTixoiV'      M. 

Graux  remarks  on  this  that  if  we  were  to  take  the  assertion  of 
Josephus  liberally,  that  his  work  contained  60,000  aTixoi,  we  should 
find  for  the  value  of  the  o-t-i'xos  the  inadmissible  quantity  28  or  29 
letters.  He  therefore  proceeds  to  explain  away  the  statement  of 
Josephus,  as  being  a  rough  expansion  of  the  assertion  that  each  of 
the  twenty  books  of  the  Antiquities  contained  2000  to  3000  a-rlxoi. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  I9 

Birt,  on  the  other  hand  (Buchwesen,  p.  204),  attempts  to  evade 
the  difficulty  by  changing  e|  Se  ^vpuia-i  into  t  8e  fivpidai,  by  means 
of  which  he  deduces  the  Josephus-line  to  be  34.2  letters. 

We  have  only  to  assume,  however,  that  Josephus  employs  the 
iambic  verse  as  his  model,  and  the  result  arrived  at  by  M.  Graux 
needs  no  further  explanation. 

A  singular  corroboration  of  this  assumption  will  be  found  by 
examining  the  lengths  of  some  of  Josephus'  own  letters  as  given 
by  himself.  I  will  here  only  briefly  allude  to  one  result  out  of 
many.  If  we  examine  the  six  letters  contained  in  the  life  of  Jose- 
phus, we  shall  find  that  the 

Letter  of  Jonathan  to  Josephus  (Vita  44)  contains  26  S-lines. 
Josephus  to  Jonathan  (Vita  44)  "  33  " 
Jonathan  to  Josephus  (Vita  45)  "  12  " 
Josephus  to  Jonathan  (Vita  45)  "  12  " 
Agrippa  to  Josephus  (^Vita  65}  "  12  " 
Agrippa  to  Josephus   (Vita  65)         "        12       " 

The  recurrence  of  the  number  12  is  very  remarkable,  and  four 
out  of  the  six  letters  reduce  at  once  to  the  S-pattern,  while  one 
of  the  remaining  letters  is  only  two  lines  in  excess. 

A  similar  remark  will  possibly  apply  to  one  or  two  other  results 
of  M.  Graux.  In  calculating  the  value  of  the  a-rixos  for  the  Epistles 
of  Clement,  as  given  in  Gebhardt's  editio  minor,  by  means  of  the 
data  supplied  by  Nicephorus  and  Anastasius,  he  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  a-rixos  h  29  letters  to  which  he  affixes  the  mark  of 
doubtfulness.  We  need  only  assume  that  the  writing  is  based  on 
the  iambic  arixos  and  all  is  clear.  M.  Graux  appears  to  accept  as 
the  mean  result  for  the  a-rlxos  based  on  the  Homeric  line,  a  number 
of  letters  between  34  and  38  as  limits,  and  with  36  for  the  normal 
type.  If  we  allow  the  same  latitude  of  limits,  say  take  the  normal 
iambic  arrlxos  at  28  or  29  letters  and  allow  limits  27  to  31  letters,  we 
can  at  once  explain  several  either  results  which  were  rather  rejected 
by  M.  Graux  as  inconsistent  with  his  theory,  or  were  marked  by 
him  with  a  query. 

3.  But  now  let  us  return  for  a  moment  to  M.  Graux's  estimate  of 
36  letters  to  the  <ttIxos..  The  following  passage  from  Eustathius, 
Bishop  of  Antioch  in  the  fourth  century,  will  perhaps  be  a  good 
test  as  far  as  the  New  Testament  is  concerned.  In  his  treatise  De 
Engastrimutho '  we  read  as  follows :  ^pav  oSv  Xidovs  tva  ^dXaa-iv  in 

1  Migne,  Patrol.  XVIII  657. 


20  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

avTov '  U)s  Se  Tavra  7rpovypa\j/€v  ev  ro3  fxera^ii  TTivre  ttov  koX  TpiuKOvrn  Trpos 
Tols   eKarov   arixovs   vTrep^as   eTTKpepei.   npoade'is '     ifiacrTacrav  ovv   oi    lovbaloi 

\l6ovs  'iva  Xidtiauxnv  avTov,  that  is  to  Say,  between  two  given  passages  of 
the  Gospel  of  John,  VIII  59  and  X  30,  Eustathius  reckons  about 
135  (TTixot.  Now  if  we  count  these  intervening  Hnes  in  Codex  B 
we  have  326  lines,  which  is  more  than  twice  135,  and  in  the  Sinaitic 
Codex  the  passage  occupies  414  lines.  If,  however,  we  count  the 
actual  letters  in  the  passage,  we  find  from  the  Sinaitic  Codex  5375 
letters,  which  when  divided  by  135  gives  us  39.9  letters  to  the 
a-Tixos,  a  result  somewhat  too  large,  but  still  confirmatory  of  M. 
Graux's  conclusion.  It  will  be  noticed  that  Eustathius  is  approxi- 
mate.' Probably  he  mistook  135  for  145.  The  number  of  inter- 
vening a-TLxoi  is  really  nearer  to  150,  and  at  36  letters  to  the  (ttlxos 
is  almost  exactly  149.  From  this  last  result  it  will  be  easy  to 
express  any  book  in  the  New  Testament  in  o-n'xoi,  for  we  may  say 
approximately : 

326  Vatican  lines  =  414  Sinaitic  lines 

=  149  arixoi.  of  36  letters  each. 

The  calculations  are  given  in  a  subsequent  table,  and  are  compared 
with  estimates  derived  from  various  codices. 

4.  The  same  supposition  of  a  normal  iambic  a-rixos  explains  the 
statement  of  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  (on  the  superiority  of 
the  elocution  of  Demosthenes)  that  Demosthenes'  works  contain 
50,000  or  60,000  o-Tt'xoi,  M.  Graux  dismisses  this  statement  with 
the  words,  '  on  voit  que  Denys  ne  tenait  pas  a  I'exactitude  absolue 
des  chiffres.'  But  even  if  we  admit  the  estimate  to  be  a  rough 
one,  we  have  a  right  to  assume  that  the  accurate  number  of  art'^oi 
should  fall  behveen  the  assigned  limits.  That  it  does  not  so  fall  is 
pointed  out  by  W.  Christ  in  his  Atticusausgabe  des  Demosthenes, 
in  which  he  calculates  from  the  stichometric  indications  of  certain 
manuscripts  of  Demosthenes  that  the  whole  number  of  (tt'ixoi-  is 
not  much  above  42,000.  The  conclusion  drawn  by  the  writer  (as 
given  by  M.  Weil  in  the  Revue  Critique  for  Nov.  27,  1882)  is  that 
the  exemplar  on  which  the  reckoning  is  based  is  one  of  shorter 
lines  than  is  usual. 

But  the  question  immediately  arises  whether  this  case  is  not 
explicable  by  the  hypothesis  of  the  iambic  line  :  increasing  the 

>  This  supposition  is  unnecessary.  Very  interesting  cases  can  be  given, 
especially  from  Galen,  of  hexameter  lines  measured  at  over  40  letters. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  21 

estimated  42,000  arlxoi  in  the  proportion  of  7  to  9,  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  the  ratio  of  the  normal  tragic  verse  to  the  heroic,  we 
have  54,000  o-Ti'xoi,  which  falls  nearly  half-way  between  the  limits 
suggested  by  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus.  We  may  study  these 
stichometric  indications  in  the  important  Munich  MS  of  Demos- 
thenes, known  as  Bavaricus,  where  the  o-W^ot  are  marked  by  hun- 
dreds on  the  margin  by  the  letters  A,  B,  etc.  They  are  given  by 
Reiske  in  his  edition  of  Demosthenes,  and  we  have  only  to  take 
the  average  o-r/;^os'  from  the  space  intervening  between  two  succes- 
sive letters. 

It  is  necessary  to  show  that  these  stichometric  marks  do  actually 
refer  to  a  line  measured  by  the  longer  model.  As  I  have  not  been 
able  to  obtain  a  copy  of  M.  Christ's  work,  I  have  calculated  the 
oTixo?  from  the  data  given  by  Reiske,  where  the  marks  are  given 
at  p.  xcii  of  the  preface,  with  the  lines  to  which  they  refer.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  mark  the  stichometric  intervals  even  if  the 
series  were  perfect  (which  is  not  the  case  by  any  means),  for,  first, 
we  cannot  tell  to  what  part  of  Reiske's  line  the  indication  applies, 
neither  can  we  be  sure  that  Reiske  knew  to  what  part  of  the  line 
of  the  MS  they  applied.  Thus  there  is  a  chance  of  error  four 
times  repeated,  twice  for  the  beginning  of  the  stichometric  interval, 
and  twice  for  its  close. 

As  an  example,  let  us  take  the  oration  against  Timocrates.  Reiske 
gives  the  following  references  to  his  pages  and  lines  for  the  sticho- 
metric marks :  703,  17  A ;  705,  17  B ;  711,  pen.  r ;  715,  10  a  ;  722, 
14  z  ;  725,  19  H  ;  728,  22  e  ;  731,  26  i ;  738, 18  a  ;  741,  26  M  ;  744, 
I  N  ;  746,  18  z  ;  752,  8  o  ;  755,  13  n ;  761,  22  2  ;  764,  25  T.  Here 
the  second  A  should  be  A,  and  the  second  z  should  be  S.  From 
these,  by  means  of  Reiske's  29-lined  page,  we  at  once  get  intervals 
58,  185,  98,  207,  92,  90,  91,  193,  95,  62,  75,  184,  92,  183,  90  lines. 
Of  these  fifteen  results,  the  first,  fourth,  tenth,  and  eleventh  are 
clearly  not  a  multiple  of  the  stichometric  interval,  either  because 
Reiske's  text  is  not  the  text  to  which  the  marks  can  properly  apply, 
or  because  the  marks  are  wrongly  placed.  From  the  remaining 
results  we  get  the  value  of  the  interval,  the  second  being  clearly 
the  double  of  such  an  interval,  and  the  mean  of  the  results  is  92.4 
Reiske-lines.  But  the  average  Reiske-line  is  40.2  letters  ;  the  sticho- 
metric interval  is  therefore  3714,48  letters,  from  which  it  at  once 
appears  that  the  marks  are  meant  to  represent  the  successive  hun- 
dreds of  hexameter  lines,  each  line  being  37  letters.  This  establishes 
the  nature  of  the  stichometry  of  Bavaricus. 


22  NEW  TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

5.  It  is  from  the  edict  of  Diocletian,  de  pretiis  vena/ium,  that  M. 
Graux  derived  the  statement  as  to  the  pay  of  the  scribe  by  the 
given  amount  of  writing.  We  proceed  to  examine  the  edict  more 
closely.  It  is  given  in  many  exemplars,  more  or  less  complete, 
in  the  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Latinarum,  Vol.  Ill,  S.  800,  the  most 
important  being  an  inscription  from  Stratonice.  The  following  are 
the  lines  that  affect  our  enquiry  : 

Membranario  in  [qua]  t[r]endone  pedali  pergamena.  [xl  denarii] 

Scriptori  in  scriptura  optima  versus  n"  centum.  [xxv] 

Se[quent]is  scripturae  versuum  n°  centum.  [xx] 
Tabellanioni  in  scriptura  libelli  bel  tabular[um]  in 

versibus  n"  centum.  [x] 

The  prices  are  wanting  in  the  inscription  from  Stratonice,  but 
they  are  supplied  from  a  Phrygian  inscription  marked  H  in  the 
Corpus.' 

The  first  thing  to  observe  is  the  existence  of  two  distinct  types 
of  writing,  denoted  respectively  optima  and  sequens.  These  are, 
as  we  should  say,  large  and  small  size ;  a  study  of  the  whole 
inscription  gives  many  instances  of  this.  Take  for  example  the 
price  of  apples  in  the  edict : 

Mala  optima  Mattiana  sive  Saligniani   n"  decern  *  quattuor. 

Sequentia  n°  viginti  *  quattuor. 

Mala  minora  n"  quadraginta  *  quattuor. 

This  establishes  the  use  of  the  words  opthnus  and  segicens  as 
relating  to  the  res  venules.  Next  observe  that  the  prices  of  the  two 
styles  of  writing  are  in  the  ratio  of  25  to  20  or  5 : 4.  Now  the 
ratio  of  the  heroic  verse  to  the  iambic  is,  as  we  have  shown,  very 
nearly  36  :  28  or  9 :  7,  which  is  a  very  close  approximation  to  the 
previous  ratio.  The  two  types  of  writing  of  the  Diocletian  edict 
are  therefore  our  two  standard  verses.^ 

^  M.  Graux  gives  the  prices  differently,  quoting  apparently  fromWaddington, 
and  is  followed  by  Birt  (Buchwesen,  p.  208).     They  write  as  follows  : 
Scriptori  in  scriptura  optima  versuum  No.  centum  .  .  . 
Sequentis  scripturae  XL 

Tabellanioni,  etc.  XXV 

Birt  also  seems  to  assume  that  "  sequens  "  refers  to  quality  rather  than  quan- 
tity: "das  Monument  unterscheidet  hier  wie  iiberall  nur  zwei  Sorten  und 
bezeichnet  die  schlechtere  als  sequens." 

^  Dr.  Bloomfield  furnishes  me  with  the  following  note  : 

In  India,  MSS  are  now  copied  and  paid  for  "by  ^.lokas  ox  grantkas .  The  9loka 
is  an  iambic  meter  consisting  of  four  times  eight  syllables,  and  any  MS,  whether 


NEW  TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.        .  23 

6.  We  observe  that  this  table  enables  us  to  determine,  to  a  close 
degree  of  approximation,  the  cost  of  the  original  transcription  of 
the  Codex  Sinaiticus.  Each  page  contains  96  iambic  o-ri^ot,  or 
almost  the  legal  hundred;  the  cost  is  therefore  20  denarii  a 
page :  allowing  345^  leaves  to  the  manuscript,  the  expense  is 
3452  X  40  denarii,  or  13,820  denarii.  And  the  date  of  the  edict 
of  Diocletian  is  so  little  anterior  to  the  production  of  the  MS 
that  we  cannot  be  far  wrong  in  our  estimate.  But  here  we  have 
only  taken  account  of  the  actually  existing  portion  of  the  MS,  and 
have  left  out  of  the  reckoning  those  portions  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment which  are  lost,  and  the  43  leaves  of  the  Cod.  Friderico- 
Augustanus. 

Scrivener  estimates  the  total  number  of  leaves  of  the  MS  down 
to  the  place  where  Hermas  breaks  off  at  724  at  the  outside  :  and 
admitting  this  estimate,  we  should  have  28,960  denarii  for  cost  of 
transcription. 

Then  comes  the  question  of  the  cost  of  the  vellum,  and  here 
again  the  Diocletian  edict  helps  us  to  an  estimate.  According  to 
the  first  of  our  quoted  lines,  a  quaternion  of  four  sheets  or  eight 
leaves  of  parchment,  a  foot  in  length,  was  to  be  sold  for  40  denarii ; 
now  the  Codex  Sinaiticus  is  just  over  the  foot  in  length  (the  Roman 
foot  being  taken  to  be  11.69  inches):  and  the  vellum  is  of  very 
fine  quality.  Allowing,  then,  90  quaternions  to  the  complete  work, 
we  put  at  least  3600  denarii  for  the  material,  which  added  to  our 
previous  reckoning  gives  32,560  denarii  for  the  complete  work.  If, 
however,  we  only  regard  the  portion  properly  known  as  the  Codex 
Sinaiticus,  we  have  to  add  1720  denarii  to  13,820,  giving  a  total  of 
15,540  denarii. 

We  conclude  that  the  cost  of  a  complete  Bible  must  have  been 
about  30,000  denarii ;  and  Constantine's  fifty  Bibles  for  the  churches 
of  Constantinople  muft  have  been  produced  at  an  expense  not  very 
different  from   1,500,000  denarii.     To  represent   this   in  modern 

prose  or  poetry,  is  now  generally  copied  upon  this  basis  of  count.  I  received, 
myself,  about  a  month  ago  two  texts  of  the  Kdncika-sutra,  a  ritualistic  work 
written  in  short  condensed  sentences,  and  in  prose.  These  sentences  contain 
mnemonic  rules  for  the  conduct  of  sacrifices  and  sacraments,  and  are  in  form 
and  context  as  far  removed  from  poetry  as  possible.  One  of  the  MSS  was 
estimated  at  1700  9lokas,  the  other  at  1750.  The  difference  in  the  number  is 
due  to  actual  differences  in  the  text,  and  to  the  fact  that  the  count  is  made  in 
round  numbers. 

A  similar  statement  will  be  found  in  Gardthausen;  Griech.  Palaographie, 
p.  132. 


24  NEW   TESTAMFaYT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

money  is  more  difficult ;  perhaps  we  shall  not  be  far  wrong  in 
taking  the  estimate  of  M.  Waddington,  that  the  denarius  =  .062 
francs. 

Birt  (Antikes  Buchwesen,  p.  209)  sets  the  denarius  down  at  .024 
marks  of  modern  money.  This  would  make  the  scribe's  pay,  for 
100  lines  of  hexameter  size,  .96  mark,  sufficiently  small  to  be  a 
correct  estimate  of  scrivener's  pay  ;  for  the  shorter  pattern,  .6 
mark  per  hundred ;  while  the  cost  of  production  of  a  complete 
Sinaitic  Codex  stands  at  720  marks  or  thereabouts.  It  is  not  a 
little  curious  that  the  estimate  which  we  have  made  of  the  cost  of 
production  of  the  books  ordered  by  Constantine  should  approach 
so  nearly  to  the  price  set  by  Tischendorf  on  the  splendid  edition 
of  Sinaiticus  produced  by  order  of  the  Emperor  Alexander  II  of 
Russia. 

7.  There  remains  one  line  of  our  edict  to  discuss.  The  notary 
(observe  the  curious  form  tabellanio  for  tabellio)  or  writer  of  the 
small  book  (libellus)  or  of  tablets,  is  paid  at  a  lower  rate.  Accord- 
ing to  the  edict,  he  is  paid  only  10  denarii  per  100  verses.  We 
cannot  be  far  wrong  in  assuming  his  lines  to  be  half  as  short  as  the 
previous  type ;  in  other  words,  his  lines  are  sensibly  the  same  as 
the  Sinaitic  line,  two  of  which  go  to  the  iambic  urlxo^'  Now  it  is 
not  unworthy  of  note  that  we  find  not  a  few  manuscripts  of  the 
New  Testament  written  on  a  model  very  little  different  from  the 
Sinaitic  Codex.  They  are  a  little  shorter,  averaging  1 1  letters  to 
the  line,  and  indicate  an  original  written  on  very  narrow  strips  of 
paper.  To  this  type  belong  the  MSS  known  as  l,  N,  r  (which  are, 
perhaps,  fragments  of  the  same  original) ;  they  are  written  in 
double  columns,  16  lines  to  the  page,  and  eleven  letters  to  the 
line.  Codex  W  is,  perhaps,  a  little  longer,  12  letters  to  the  line, 
and  in  double  columns,  of  23  lines  to  the  column. 

8.  The  table  which  contains  our  calculatiofi  of  the  o-r/xoi  for  the 
separate  books  is  deserving  of  a  careful  study.  The  first  column 
is  taken  from  Scrivener,  p.  63  of  Introduction  to  N.  T.  Criti- 
cism. He  states  that  for  the  Gospels  his  figures  are  taken 
from  Codd.  G.  S.  and  27  Cursives  named  by  Scholz.  It  will 
be  observed  that  as  a  general  rule  the  results  of  the  second 
column  exceed  those  of  the  third.  But  in  the  case  of  the  Acts 
the  order  is  nearly  reversed.  Probably  the  explanation  is  that 
the  Acts  is  written  more  closely  in  Codex  B  than  any  other 
book,  and  so  we  have  a  smaller  number  of  lines  from  which  to 
calculate  our  o-r/^oi.     The  first  column  is  at  the  beginning  much 


NEW    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  25 

in  excess  of  the  second  and  third,  probably  in  consequence  of 
interpolations  in  the  Gospels  followed  by  Codices  G.  S,  etc.,  or 
omissions  in  the  great  uncials.  For  the  succeeding  Epistles  the 
second  and  third  columns  give  as  a  rule  results  slightly  in  excess 
of  the  first,  except  for  the  Hebrews,  where  the  Sinaitic  Codex  has 
some  omissions  to  account  for,  and  in  James  and  I  John. 

We  may  actually  test  the  results  in  the  case  of  such  short  com- 
positions as  Philemon  and  the  two  shorter  Epistles  of  John.  By 
actual  reckoning  then  on  the  II  and  III  Epistles  of  John  as  given 
in  Westcott  and  Hort's  edition,  we  find  30  and  31  (nlxoi  respec- 
tively. The  abbreviated  forms  are  taken  for  ^eoD,  lr}<Tov,  xp^<^rov,  but 
these  abbreviations  will  not  affect  the  result  arrived  at.  For  Phile- 
mon the  same  text  gives  42  o-tlxoi  ;  but  if  we  do  not  abbreviate 
we  must  add  nearly  sixty  letters;  the  last  arixos  numbered  15 
letters  ;  and  we  have  therefore  to  add  about  39  letters  or  just  over 
a  verse,  which  brings  the  result  very  close  to  the  calculation  from 
the  Sinaitic,  or  the  estimate  of  M.  Graux. 

The  result  arrived  at  by  M.  Graux,  and  confirmed  by  our  own 
researches,  is  in  the  first  instance  deduced  from  the  fact  that  the 
average  value  of  the  o-tlxos,  as  calculated,  fluctuates  between  very 
narrow  limits.  And  I  can  imagine  some  one  objecting  that  such 
a  result  would  be  a  thing  that  any  one  might  anticipate,  and  that 
we  might  just  as  well  calculate  the  average  length  of  a  verse  in  the 
English  Bible,  and  then  draw  the  inference  that  these  verses  were 
constructed  according  to  a  pattern,  which  can  hardly  be  believed 
in  any  strict  sense.  To  reply  to  this  objection,  perhaps  the  simplest 
counter-argument  would  be  to  observe  that,  if  there  were  really  an 
average  number  of  letters  to  the  verse,  fluctuating  between  limits 
as  narrow  in  proportion  as  in  the  case  of  the  number  of  letters  to 
the  arixos,  there  ought  to  be  an  approximately  uniform  ratio 
between  the  number  of  o-ri^ot  and  the  number  of  verses  in  the  sep- 
arate books;  for  if is  approximately  constant,  where  ?n  is  the 

P 
whole  number  of  letters  in  a  book,  and  p  the  number  of  (rri;toi,  and 

if  —  is  also  approximately  constant,  where  ^  is  the   number  of 

verses,  then  p  :  q  is  approximately  a  constant  ratio.  We  can  at 
once  test  this  point  by  taking  the  number  of  o-tixoi-  and  verses  as 
given  by  Scrivener,  Introduction  to  N.  T.,  p.  63.  The  result  of 
the  enquiry  is  as  follows : 


26  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

Ratio. 
2.390 

2-383 
2.380 
2.300 
2.506 
2.240 
2.247 

2.524 
2.514 
2.307 

2.133 
2.720 
2.124 
1.990 
2.304 
1.966 
2.013 
2.000 
2.189 
2.168 
2.255 
2.035 
2.072 
2.130 
1.520 
2.320 
4.444 

That  is  (leaving  out  the  case  of  Revelation,  where  the  number 
o(  (TTixoi  is  obviously  apocryphal),  the  ratio  varies  between  1.52  and 
2.72,  which  is  more  divergent  than  3  to  5.  In  the  longer  compo- 
sitions the  ratio  tends  to  uniformity,  as  we  should  expect.  It  is 
clear,  then,  that  the  average  of  M.  Graux's  results  is  something 
more  than  a^iere  numerical  average,  and  implies  the  existence  of 
an  underlying  type. 

9.  It  is  important  that  we  should  grasp  the  bearing  of  the  previous 
researches  upon  the  antiquity  of  the  texts  contained  in  the  two 
great  Uncials.  Scrivener,  in  his  collation  of  the  Codex  Sinaiticus, 
draws  attention  to  the  remarkable  resemblance  of  the  writing  to 
that  of  the  Herculanean  papyri,  none  of  which,  as  he  ingeniously 
remarks,  can  be  dated  below  A.  D.  79.     He  draws  a  similar  com- 


arlxo!. 

Modern  Verses. 

Matthew 

2560 

107 1 

Mark 

1616 

678 

Luke 

2740 

II51 

John 

2024 

880 

Acts 

2524 

1007 

James 

242 

108 

I  Peter 

236 

105 

II  Peter 

154 

61 

I  John 

274 

105 

II  John 

36 

13 

III  John 

32 

15 

Jude 

68 

25 

Romans 

920 

433 

I  Cor. 

870 

437 

II  Cor. 

590 

256 

Galat. 

293 

149 

Ephesians 

312 

155 

Philipp. 

208 

104 

Coloss. 

208 

95 

I  Thess. 

193 

89 

II  Thess. 

106 

47 

I  Tim. 

230 

"3 

II  Tim. 

172 

83 

Titus 

98 

46 

Philemon 

38 

25 

Hebrews 

703 

303 

Revelation 

1800 

405 

NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  27 

parison  with  regard  to  the  almost  entire  absence  of  marks  of  punc- 
tuation/ "  The  two  manuscripts  are  near  akin.  In  the  Hyperides 
papyri  are  no  stops  at  all,  in  the  Herculanean  very  few."  "  With 
regard  to  the  columnar  arrangement  his  remarks  are  even  more 
suggestive.  "  Still  more  striking  is  the  likeness  which  Cod.  Sinai- 
ticus  bears  to  these  records  of  the  first  century  in  respect  to  its 
outward  form  and  arrangement.  The  latter  are  composed  of  nar- 
row slips  of  the  papyrus,  the  writing  on  which  is  seldom  more 
than  2  or  2  J  inches  broad,  glued  together  in  parallel  columns,  and 
kept  in  scrolls  which  were  unrolled  at  one  end  for  the  purpose  of 
reading,  and  when  read  rolled  up  at  the  other  .  .  .  the  appearance 
of  the  Sinai  manuscript,  with  its  eight  narrow  columns  (seldom 
exceeding  two  inches  in  breadth,  exhibited  on  each  open  leaf,  sug- 
gests at  once  the  notion  that  it  was  transcribed  line  for  line  from 
some  primitive  papyrus,  whether  written  in  Egypt  or  elsewhere." ' 
The  main  point  to  be  noted  is  that  the  papyri  from  which  our 
great  manuscripts  are  transcribed  must  have  been  closely  related, 
almost  line  for  line,  to  the  original  papyri  of  the  Gospels  and 
Epistles,  or  it  is  extremely  unlikely  that  they  would  end  in  any 
other  way  on  the  pages  than  by  random  distribution.  And  thus 
our  investigation  constitutes  the  proof  of  the  important  statement 
of  Westcott  and  Hort,  that  "  the  ancestries  of  these  two  manu- 
scripts diverged  from  a  point  near  the  autographs."  They  might 
almost  have  said  "  from  the  autographs."  But  when  we  establish 
this  result,  we  reserve  the  important  qualification,  that  these  MSS 
are  not  exempt  from  occasional  errors  of  omission  or  insertion  of 
whole  sheets  and  lines ;  nor  are  they  entirely  free  from  that  error 
which  arises  from  a  derangement  of  the  order  of  the  sheets  of 
which  the  original  document  was  composed.  The  latter  I  believe 
to  be  peculiarly  the  case  with  the  Gospel  of  John.  How  far  such 
omissions  and  excisions  are  wilful,  it  is  impossible  to  say  ;  it  is  to 
such  a  case  that  the  remark  of  TertuUian  applies  when  he  accuses 
Marcion  of  using  not  the  pen,  but  the  knife  in  his  dealing  with 
documents.  He  probably  means  to  imply  that  whole  strips  of 
papyrus  had  disappear-^d  from  the  rolls.  But  I  think  it  will  be 
found  upon  a  closer  examination  of  this  difficult  point,  that  the 
character  of  Marcion  has  been  unnecessarily  blackened,  and  that 
in  many  respects  he  will  turn  out  to  be  almost  a  champion  of 
textual  purity.     It  became  the  fashion  to  brand  every  omission  from 

'  Scrivener,  Collation  of  Codex  Sinaiticus,  p.  xiv. 

•2  P.  xxviii.  ^  r.  XXX. 


28  NEIV   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

the  ordinary  Church  MSS  with  the  name  ofMarcion.  We  find  this 
charge  made  even  by  so  noble  a  spirit  as  Origen  with  regard  to 
the  conchiding  verses  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 

We  now  annex  the  table  which  gives  the  comparison  between 
the  number  of  o-Tt'xoi  as  quoted  from  early  codices,  and  the  number 
as  calculated  from  the  lines  enumerated  in  tables  I  and  II  for  the 
s'everal  books  of  the  New  Testament,  on  the  basis  of  a  number  of 
lines  in  St.  John's  Gospel  actually  measured  into  o-n'xot.  Since  we 
find  our  results  frequently  in  coincidence  or  near  it,  and  seldom 
differing  from  one  another  more  than  5  per  cent.,  the  result  is  con- 
firmatory of  the  previous  statements  made  as  to  the  fixed  length  of 
the  uTixo'i.  When  allowance  has  been  made  for  the  omissions  and 
insertions  in  the  MSS,  we  may  perhaps  find  it  useful  to  recalculate 

the  figures  given. 

Table  IV. 


ON          C 

'5  s 

1^ 

-a  0 

^°g 

0  c 

S             5      M  m  tc  2. 

£.5 
-:«    . 

•"T3-0 

rli'?  Tl"i" 

xop. 
b 

Vol 
'-  V-  ^ 
b 

0I 

Matthew 

2560 

2442 

2401 

2560 

Mark 

I616 

1492 

1470 

I616 

Luke 

2740 

2629 

2583 

2750 

John 

2024 

1865 

1861       ■ 

2024 

Acts 

2524 

2497 

2526 

2556 

Romans 

920 

944 

918 

920 

I  Cor. 

.       870 

886 

885 

870 

II  Cor. 

590 

608 

607 

612 

590 

Galatians 

293 

293 

293 

312 

293 

Ephesians 

312 

317 

313 

312 

312 

Philippians 

20S 

216 

210 

200 

208 

Colossians 

208 

219 

212 

300 

208 

I  Thess. 

193 

205 

198 

193 

II  Thess. 

106 

112 

105 

180 

106 

I  Tim. 

230 

239 

250  ? 

230 

II  Tim. 

172 

174 

180 

199 

Titus 

98 

ICO 

96 

97 

Philemon 

38 

43 

42 

Hebrews 

703 

670 

750 

703 

James 

242 

242 

236 

242 

I  Peter 

236 

244 

245 

236 

II  Peter 

154 

168 

164 

I  John 

274 

262 

263 

274 

II  John 

30 

31 

31 

32 

III  John 

32 

31 

31 

31 

Jude 

68 

70 

71 

68 

Revelation 

1800 

1179 

NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  29 

C.  I.  When  we  proceed  to  examine  in  detail  the  various  read- 
ings and  errors  of  the  principal  manuscripts  in  the  Catholic  Epis- 
tles, we  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  nothing  to  affect 
our  results  in  the  two  smaller  Epistles  of  John,  nor  in  the  Epistle 
of  James.  With  regard  to  the  first  Epistle  of  John,  the  only  pas- 
sage where  we  can  regard  the  text  of  B  as  uncertain  is  in 
IV  3,  where  the  words  xp'-'^'^^v  iv  aapKi  eKrjkvdoTa  are  omitted,  the 
length  of  the  omission  being  a  V-line,  and  the  passage  being 
retained  by  the  Sinaitic  Codex;  and  at  IV  21  there  is  a  line 
omitted  by  B.  Then  we  come  to  the  question  of  the  cele- 
brated passage  I  John  V  7,  or  the  "  Three  Heavenly  Witnesses  "  ; 
the  text  of  this  would  occupy  about  five  V-lines.  Our  method  of 
investigation  agrees  with  every  other  applied  critical  test  in  rejecting 
the  words.  The  abnormal  excess  of  the  number  of  (rrixot  noted  in 
some  early  codices  of  St.  John  over  the  number  as  calculated  by 
ourselves,  leads  to  the  suspicion  that  there  may  have  been  Greek 
codices,  now  lost,  in  which  the  words  occurred.  The  defenders 
of  the  passage,  if  there  are  any  left,  can  actually  count  the  arlxoi  in 
the  first  Epistle  of  John  and  compare  their  results  with  the  number 
as  given  by  Scrivener.  The  disputed  passage  is  a  matter  of  3 
ittIxoi- 

2.  The  Epistle  of  Jude  is  an  interesting  study  from  our  point  of 
view.  There  are  no  various  readings  that  are  likely  to  affect  the 
arrangement  of  the  Epistle;  in  the  15th  verse  the  text  of  the  Sina- 
itic is  perplexing,  and  in  the  25th  verse  both  the  oldest  codices 
agree  in  the  addition  of  two  V-lines  to  the  ordinary  text.  But  the 
significant  feature  of  the  examination  of  the  text  is  the  discovery 
that  the  scribe  of  the  Sinaitic  Codex  has  in  v.  12  mistaken  the  olroi 
elaiu  of  the  verse  for  the  same  words  in  v.  16,  and  has  consequently 
interpolated  four  lines  from  that  verse  before  detecting  his  error 
and  returning  to  the  proper  passage.  His  eye  has,  apparently, 
wandered  from  the  top  of  a  column  nearly  to  the  bottom  in  search 
of  the  words  which  he  had  either  recently  transcribed  or  was  pro- 
posing to  transcribe.  We  need  scarcely  say  that  such  a  supposition 
is  extremely  unlikely.  When,  however,  we  restore  the  pages  to 
the  S -form,  as  they  may  be  easily  exhibited,  we  see  that  the  scribe's 
eye  has  really  only  wandered  from  the  first  line  of  the  column  he 
was  transcribing  to  the  first  line  of  a  column  not  very  remote  from 
it,  and  commencing  with  the  very  same  words.  And  this  is  so 
thoroughly  likely  that  it  must  be  regarded  as  no  slight  confirmation 
of  our  theory  of  the  subdivision  of  the  columns. 


30  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

It  is  not  to  be  necessarily  inferred  that  the  Epistle  was  originally- 
written  on  the  S-page ;  we  have  already  seen  reason  to  assume  the 
opposite  type  (unless,  indeed,  the  doxology  should  be  shown  not 
to  be  genuine) ;  but  the  point  that  we  press  is  the  fact  of  the  reduc- 
tion of  smaller  pages  into  the  form  given  in  the  Sinaitic  Codex. 
From  the  same  enquiry  another  result  follows :  the  ratio  of  the 
S-lines  to  the  V-lines  for  this  Epistle  was  abnormally  high,  but 
when  we  proceed  to  subtract  the  four  lines  inserted  by  the  Sinaitic, 
and  recalculate  the  ratio,  we  find  1.268  instead  of  1.293. 

3.  We  proceed  to  examine  the  text  of  the  first  Epistle  of  Peter, 
which  we  do  more  in  detail  in  order  to  illustrate  the  methods  by 
which  we  restore  the  text,  prior  to  dividing  it  into  the  smaller 
pages. 

I  Peter. 

Letters.  Text  Rec.  X  B.  W.  H.  Tr. 

I  22.    but  irvevfiaros                       12           -f-  —  —           —  — 

I  23.    els  Tov  alwva                         1 1            -p  —  —           —  — 

III     5-    fKOdfiovv  eavTiis                   1 4             1  —  ~r~           "T"  "T 

III  7-    Kci^a  yvwatv                          lO           -{-  —  -|-            ~p  -|- 

IV  5'    aTrobuicrovcnv  \6yov             ID           -f-  —  -|-            -j-  -j- 

III  16.     vfJLmv  w?  KaKOTTOiwv  15  r"  r  —  —       [ — J 

IV  14.  KM  bvvdixtcos  II  —  -p  —  —  — 
IV    14'    Kara  fxfp  avrovs  j3\a(r<prj- 

fieirai  Kara  8e  iifxas  8o^d- 

(frai                                       44  -f-  —  —  —  — 

V  2.    eiTiaKOTVovvTes                       1 3  r"  —  —  —             \ 

V  5*    vTTOTaaaofievoi                      1 3  "7"  —  —  —  — 

V  10.    defXfXiQxrai  ID  -f-  -f"  —  —  — 

In  addition  B  omits  the  whole  of  V  3,  containing  58  letters,  z.  e. 
between  3  and  4  Vatican  lines,  which  will  certainly  make  the  text 
eight  Vatican  columns,  and  36  lines,  but  it  does  not  fill  the  page. 
In  the  Sinaitic  we  have,  besides  the  variants  noted,  and  some 
smaller  ones,  six  short  columns,  so  that  in  S-pages  we  have  14 
columns  and  one  or  two  lines,  which  seems  to  indicate  56  S-pages. 
The  letters  missed  or  inserted  look  like  complete  Sinaitic  lines, 
which  again  confirms  our  opinion  that  the  original  form  of  the 
document  is  the  S-page. 

When  we  add  the  missing  lines  to  the  texts  and  calculate  afresh 
the  ratio  of  the  V-line  to  the  S-line,  we  have  1.250. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  3 1 

Another  remarkable  confirmation  of  our  subdivision  of  the 
Sinaitic  pages  is  found  at  II  12  of  this  Epistle.  The  scribe  left  his 
work  at  the  beginning-  of  the  21st  S-page,  where  he  was  about  to 
transcribe  the  words  bo^iiauyai  rw  deov.  These  words  stand  at  pres- 
ent at  the  second  line  of  the  page.  But,  in  returning  to  his  task, 
he  opened  at  the  second  Epistle  of  Peter  by  mistake,  and  here  at 
the  nth  verse  of  the  second  chapter  he  found  the  key-word  86^as 
and  began  to  write  86^as  ol  rpefxovcriv,  thus  transcribing  what  would 
be  the  first  line  of  the  19th  S-page  in  the  second  Epistle  of  Peter. 
The  traces  of  the  error  still  remain.  And  it  is  impossible  to  give 
a  rational  explanatioii  of  the  aberration  of  the  scribe  unless  we 
subdivide  the  pages  in  the  manner  we  have  indicated. 

3.  In  the  2d  Episde  of  Peter  we  rectify  the  text  in  a  similar 
manner,  the  two  most  important  phenomena  being  that  the  Sinaitic 
scribe  has  in  I  12,  13,  omitted  8  lines,  from  bih  /xeXXijo-w  to  buyeipuv, 
and  that  the  error  is  almost  balanced  by  the  existence  of  nine  short 
columns. 

More  important  still  is  the  light  which  the  rectification  of  the 
pages  throws  on  a  very  difficult  passage  in  III  10,  where  the  read- 
ing adopted  by  Westcott  and  Hort  is  a  source  of  immense  merri- 
ment to  Dr.  Burgon.     The  ordinary  reading  in  this  passage  is 

/cat  yri  koi  to.  iv  aiiTrj  epya  KaTaKaTja-erai. 

For  KaTaKm](xeTin  (which  is  the  reading  of  A,  L,  the  Clementine 
Vulgate,  the  Memphitic,  and  some  other  versions)  the  two  earliest 
MSS  read  evpedrja-erai,  and  are  supported  by  sundry  versions  and 
by  Codex  K,     Codex  C  suggests  dcfjavia-dqa-oprai. 

Tregelles  and  Westcott  and  Hort  import  the  utterly  meaningless 
€vpe6fjaeTni  into  the  text,  apparently  on  the  ground  that  it  is  safe  to 
follow  ten  times  in  succession  a  group  of  manuscripts  which  is 
demonstrated  to  be  reliable  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten. 

Burgon,  on  the  other  hand,  will  have  the  ordinary  reading  to  be 
correct,  and  affirms  the  reading  of  Codices  x  to  B  to  be  a  rude 
attempt  of  some  Western  scribe  to  translate  or  transliterate  the 
Latin  word  tireyitur  !  More  strangely  still,  so  judicious  a  critic  as 
Farrar  is  found  supporting  this  peculiar  suggestion,  and  even 
claims  the  paternity  of  the  monster.  Thus  he  remarks :  "  It  had 
occurred  to  me,  before  I  saw  it  remarked  elsewhere,  that  it  might 
be  some  accidental  confusion  with  the  Latin  urentur"  (Early 
days  of  Christianity,  p.  121). 

We  now  turn  to  the  Sinaitic  Codex,  and  observe  that  exactly  24 
lines  beyond  the  disputed  passage  lie  the  words  airw  d<pi6r]  \  vai  iv 


32  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

f-lpiivrj.  Moreover,  the  passage  in  dispute  occurs  within  a  line  of 
the  bottom  of  one  of  the  Sinaitic  columns,  and,  in  all  probability, 
when  the  passage  is  rectified,  the  words  are  either  the  highest  or 
the  lowest  line  of  an  S-page.  The  scribe's  eye,  therefore,  wanders 
laterally  two  columns,  and  hence  the  word  (vfifdrjaeTai.  This  ex- 
plains the  origin  of  the  variant.  We  infer  also  from  the  discrep- 
ancy of  later  copies  that  we  have  here  a  case  in  which  the  original 
reading  is  entirely  lost  and  the  text  has  been  restored  by  a  con- 
jectural emendation. 

Further,  since  the  error  took  place  in  a  MS  of  the  S-type,  it 
follows  that  that  type  is  nearer  to  the  autograph  of  the  Epistle 
than  any  other,  which  is  exactly  in  accordance  with  our  previous 
enquiry ;  for,  otherwise,  some  manuscript  would,  doubtless,  have 
conserved  the  original  reading.  The  conjectural  restoration  made 
by  the  early  MSS  is  not  based  upon  any  critical  study  of  the  text ; 
and  in  order  to  fill  the  blank  left  by  the  removal  oi  evpiOrj,  we  must 
endeavor  to  determine  the  causes  which  led  to  the  error.  These 
are  (i)  the  similarity  of  avrrj  in  v.  lo  to  avr(^  in  v.  14 ;  (2)  the 
similarity  either  to  eye  or  ear  of  the  words  which  have  become 
confounded. 

A  reading  which  would  satisfy  both  conditions  would  be 
eKpvr]6rj(T€Tai,  which  Professor  Gildersleeve  suggests.'  We  find  a 
similar  word  dnoppvijdrja-eTaL  in  some  MSS  of  Barnabas  c.  11,  the 
passage  being  really  a  quotation  from  the  first  Psalm  ;  and  e^epirjpev 
is  the  word  used  for  the  fading  leaf  in  Isaiah  64,  5.  This  exactly 
expresses  the  idea  of  the  writer. 

4.  We  now  turn  to  the  Pauhne  Epistles,  in  which  we  return  to  our 
first  approximation  to  the  number  of  the  original  pages  of  the  auto- 
graphs, and  examine  the  manner  in  which  the  results  are  affected 
by  the  principal  errors,  reserving  all  our  conclusions  for  a  closer 
scrutiny  in  connexion  with  the  original  documents  at  some  later 
time.  It  is  extremely  unfortunate  that  there  is  no  critical  apparatus 
to  the  New  Testament  except  Scrivener's  collation  of  the  Sinaitic, 
which  records  the  accidental  omissions  or  repetitions  of  the  great 
uncials ;  we  are,  therefore,  obliged  to  collate  for  ourselves  the  text 
ot  every  book,  in  order  to  see  that  no  lines  are  dropped  or  repeated. 
And  this,  in  spite  of  the  compensations  arising  from  a  close  study 
of  the  early  arrangement  of  the  text,  is  somewhat  tedious  and  de- 
mands a  great  deal  of  time. 

'  I  see  that  Westcott  &  Hort  make  a  similar  suggestion  in  their  introduction, 
and  disown  the  very  reading  which  they  adopt. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  33 


I  Thessalonians. 

Letters.     Text  Rcc. 

N 

B. 

I 

I. 

OTTO  ^eov  TTarpos  rjficbv 

KOi 

Kvpiov  'lijaoi  Xpia-Tov 

?24          + 

+ 



II 

16. 

Tcis  duaprias 

II          + 

+ 



III 

2. 

Knl  avvepybv  t'jpcou 

15          + 

— 

[+] 

V 

8. 

Kcil  ciyaTnjs 

9       + 

— 

+ 

Tr. 


+  + 


These  are  the  only  three  readings  of  any  importance.  The  Epistle 
is  written  on  the  V-page  to  the  full,  and  will  not  bear  any  additions  ; 
we  agree  with  the  editors  in  rejecting  the  first  reading.  The  second 
reading  is  remarkable,  as  there  has  been  a  conflation  by  the  Textus 
Receptus  and  late  copies  of  the  two  simple  readings  km  8uikovov  tov 
6eov  and  koI  awepyov  7]p.cov.  Either  of  the  alternative  readings  may 
be  taken,  and  the  length  of  the  Epistle  is  not  affected  by  our  choice, 
provided  we  do  not  make  the  error  of  conflation  and  take  them 
both. 

The  third  reading  is  an  omission  on  the  part  of  the  Sinaitic. 
At  II  13  the  Sinaitic  has  repeated  10  lines  by  opoiorlX^vTov  of  the 
letters  avrovOeov.  We  have  thus  to  reduce  the  estimate  made  for 
the  Sinaitic  Codex  by  11  lines,  and  leaves  us  with  11  columns  and 
10  lines,  or  very  nearly  45  S-pages. 

But  now  the  question  arises,  why  should  the  scribe  have  wan- 
dered back  10  lines  in  search  of  tov  0€ov  ?  The  interval  is  a  very 
improbable  one  as  the  MS  is  written,  but  when  the  pages  are  rec- 
tified it  will  be  found  that  the  aberration  of  the  scribe's  eye  is 
almost  entirely  lateral,  and  does  not  amount  to  a  couple  of  lines 
vertically. 

5.  II  Thessalonians  :  Here  we  have  both  codices  ending  unevenly, 
the  Sinaitic  at  the  third  line,  and  the  Vatican  at  the  34th  line.  The 
text,  moreover,  is  extremely  exact.  Marcion  is  said  to  have  omitted 
in  I  8  (V  0Xoyt  TTvpos,  13  letters;  in  II  4  the  Sinaitic  omits  Kal 
vnepaipop-evos,  16  letters  ;  and  in  II  15  it  omits  6  uyamja-as  rjfjias,  12  let- 
ters. In  III  4  the  Vatican  text  has  inserted  koI  fTroiija-aTe,  12  letters. 
These  seem  to  be  all  the  readings  of  any  importance. 

A  reference  to  the  Codex  Sinaiticus  shows  us  the  following- 
peculiarity  :  it  has  twice  made  a  single  line  of  the  two  letters  x^,  and 
twice  made  a  single  line  of  iv  x^',  the  four  instances  are  as  follows: 

I  2.  IV  xv  a  fresh  line,  probably  rendered  necessary  by  the  inser- 
tion of  the  word  r};uwj/, 

I  8.  evayyeXi  \  a  tov  kv  i]fj.wv  iv  \  xv,  where  the  word  ;^u  is  rejected 
by  all  the  editors. 


34  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

I  12.     KaTarr]vxo-{»-VTOv  \  6u  rjfjLcov  Kai  kv  iv  |   ;^{J,  whcrC  the  VVOl'd  SCemS 

genuine. 

II  14.  TrepnroiT)(Tiv  So  |  ^t)s  tov  kv  tjjjlwv  \  iv  x^,  where  the  last  hne  is 
genuine. 

There  are  one  or  two  other  very  short  Hnes.  It  is  probably  in 
these  short  lines  that  the  explanation  is  to  be  sought  of  the  three 
extra  lines  above  pattern  in  the  Sinaitic  Codex.  It  will  be  observed 
that  the  errors  of  the  Epistle  are  mainly  S-errors.  We  conclude 
that  the  Epistle  is  probably  represented  by  24  S-pages.  The  result 
is  confirmed  by  observing  that  in  III  4,  B  has  conflated  the  two 

readings  Troieire  kqI  TToirjaeTe,  f7ron']<TaTe  kgI  nouire  mtO  fTTOLTjo-are  Kn\  TTOieire 

Kai  noi^afTt.     It  seems  unlikely  that  this  would  happen  if  the  text 
of  B  in  this  Epistle  were  modelled  on  the  original  tradition. 

6.  I  Corinthians  :  The  text  is  very  good.  At  the  beginning  of 
c.  XIII  the  scribe  of  the  Sinaitic  has  dropped  134  letters,  from  ytyova 
XoXkos  to  aydnrjv  8e  fxr]  e'xo).  The  error,  which  is  almost  exacdy  10 
S-lines,  was  due  to  the  fact  that  a  previous  sentence  ended  also 
with  firj  exoo-  Moreover,  the  error  is  facilitated,  as  in  the  case  men- 
tioned above,  by  the  existence  of  the  smaller  pages,  which  bring 
the  two  similar  passages  into  contiguity.  Other  errors  are  the 
repetition  of  four  lines  in  I  8,  the  omission  of  four  lines  in  II  15, 
the  omission  of  a  line  in  X  19  ;  of  two  lines  in  XV  13,  and  of  four 
lines  in  XV  26,  27. 


+         +         + 


Our  table  must  now  be  corrected  so  as  to  make  the  epistle  206 
S-pages  and  several  lines. 

7.  II  Corinthians:  The  principal  errors  are  as  follows: 

Letters.  Text.  Rec.     ^  B-           ^^-  ^'-           ^''■ 

VIII      4.     ^i^atreai  fj/j-as                    12  -\-           —  —           —           — 

IX     4*    '''1^  Kavxf]crea>s                   12  -j—            — 

XII      7*     '''"  F*)  ^irepaipo) fiat          1 6  -\-           —  -\-           ~\~       \_      J 

XII   II.     Kavxo^p-fvos                         lO  -|-           —  — 

Here  the  errors,  though  few,  are  chiefly  of  the  S-type  ;  from  the 
readings  given  we  might  perhaps  add  i6  letters  to  the  Sinaitic  text. 
But  this  would  still  leave  a  large  blank  in  a  sheet.    On  the  other  hand, 


Letters. 

Text  Rec. 

N 

I 

27. 

lua  Tovs  (Totpovs  .  . 

. 

e^eXe^aro  6  6s 

54 

+ 

+ 

III 

3- 

Kai  dixoaraa-lai 

14 

+ 

— 

^11 

5- 

TTj  vrjcrreia  koI 

12 

+ 

— 

XI 

24. 

Xd/3eTe  (payere 

12 

+ 

— 

NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  35 

the  V-pages  fit  exactly,  only  we  must  allow  for  the  omission  by  B 
of  a  line  in  I  13  and  the  repetition  of  four  lines  in  III  16. 

8.  The  Epistle  to  the  Romans  does  not  seem  to  conform,  as  yet, 
very  closely  to  any  type. 

Perhaps  the  explanation  of  this  fact  may  be  in  the  repetition  by 
Codex  B  of  four  lines  at  IV  4,  from  6  ixia-Bos  to  epyaCofievco.  This 
would  make  the  Epistle  148  V-pages. 

There  is  a  further  difficulty  about  the  concluding  salutations  and 
doxology,  the  consideration  of  which  is  very  important,  because 
in  the  first  place  Origen '  distinctly  charges  Marcion  with  hav- 
ing excised  them ;  secondly,  we  find  them  inserted  in  some  co- 
dices at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  chapter;  thirdly,  some  codices, 
notably  Codex  A,  which  can  hardly  ever  resist  an  opportunity  of 
conflation  of  documents,  have  retained  the  doxology  in  both  places ; 
fourthly,  Marcion  is  also  charged  with  the  excision  of  the  remainder 
of  the  Epistle  from  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  chapter.  It  becomes 
interesting  to  examine  the  length  of  this  portion  in  Vatican  type. 
At  present  it  does  not  look  as  if  Marcion  had  done  anything  of  the 
kind  attributed  to  him. 

The  doxology  starts  at  the  top  of  a  column,  tqaeaynamenqymas, 
and  occupies  in  the  manuscript  16  lines  and  4  letters.  Moreover, 
the  portion  from  Rom.  XVI  i  to  the  end  which  contains  all  those 
very  doubtful  salutations  to  people  whom  one  can  hardly  believe 
to  have  been  at  Rome,  contains  very  nearly  10  V-pages  with  the 
doxology ;  or  nearly  g  V-pages  without  it.  We  may  conjecture  that 
these  9  V-pages  are  really  a  part  of  the  subscription  to  another 
Epistle.  It  is  not,  however,  a  point  material  to  our  hypothesis, 
viz.  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  was  written  on  the  V-page. 

In  Romans  the  text  is  very  exact. 

Letters.    Text.  Rec.  X  B.         IV.  H.        Tr 

VIII      I.    ^i.r]  Kara  crdpKa  .  .  .  Kara 


TTvevfxa 

37 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

— 

IX  28. 

iv  SiKmoavvy] .  . .  awTfTfirjuevov  33 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

— 

XI5. 

TOiv  fvayy.  eipTjVTjv 

25 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

— 

XI    6. 

el  8f  e^  epyoav  .  .  .  ovk  fTi  earlv 

epyov 

53 

+ 

— 

[  +  ] 

— 

— 

XII  17. 

eVcoTTtoj/  TOV  6v  Kai 

15 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

— 

XIII    9. 

ov  \lrev8ofinpTvprjaeis 

18 

+ 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

XIV    6. 

Kal  0  p.f)  (ppovcop  .  .  .  ov  (f)povei   3 1 

+ 

— 

— 

— 

— 

XIV  21. 

17  (TKavdnXi^eraL  fj  dadevel 

22 

+ 

— 

+ 

— 

+ 

XV  13. 

eh  TO  Trepi(Taeveii>  vfids 

20 

+ 

+ 

-f 

+ 

XV  ^2. 

Kul  (TvvavmraixTuipai  vpiu 

21 

+ 

+ 

— 

-f- 

+ 

XVI  \2. 

aa-ndcraade  liepdiba  k.  r.  X. 

49 

+ 

+ 

+ 

+ 

+ 

XVI  24. 

'Orig.  Int. 

39 
IV  6S7 

+ 

~ 

~ 

36  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

The  majority  of  these  readings  are  of  the  V-type,  and  the  text 
can  now  be  easily  rectified.  The  question  of  the  salutations  is 
more  difficult ;  as  already  stated,  we  conjecture  that  they  are  a 
separate  document,  really  intended  as  a  codicil  to  the  Ephesian 
Epistle  ;  but,  having  been  written  on  the  V-type,  a  mistake  easily 
arose  in  reducing  the  documents,  and  finding  an  Epistle  of  the 
S-type  carrying  final  leaves  of  the  V-pattern. 

9.  Galatians:  The  only  reading  of  any  importance  is  in  III  i : 

Letters.     Text.  Rec.      J<  B.  IV.  H.        Tr. 

Tt]  aki)6i.[a  fxrj  neideaBai  20  -|-  —  —  —         — 

We  can,  at  the  most,  add  one  line  to  the  Vatican  text ;  but  this  we 
must  not  do,  first,  because  of  the  consensus  of  authorities  and  editors 
against  the  reading ;  and,  secondly,  because  the  large  writing  of 
St.  Paul  in  the  close  of  the  Epistle  would  run  over  into  another 
page  if  the  reading  w^ere  admitted,  a  most  improbable  event.  On 
the  other  hand,  B  has  repeated  a  line  in  I  11. 

There  is  no  reasonable  conclusion  other  than  that  the  Epistle  to 
the  Galatians  was  written  on  47  V-pages.  The  single  reading 
quoted  seems  to  be  of  the  V-type. 

10.  Ephesians :  At  first  sight  this  Epistle  seems  not  to  be  writ- 
ten on  full  sheets ;  or,  if  so,  not  on  sheets  of  the  V-  and  S-type. 
In  one  Codex,  B,  it  occupies  16  columns  and  22  lines,  i.  e.  six 
lines  less  than  50  V-pages;  and  in  the  other  it  occupies  18 
columns  and  five  lines,  /.  e.  seven  lines  less  than  73  S-pages. 
We  proceed  to  examine  the  codices,  and  to  discuss  those  varia- 
tions of  the  text  which  may  affect  seriously  the  space  that  it 
occupies. 

And  first  of  all  we  find  that  the  scribe  of  n  has  omitted  the  seventh 
verse  of  the  second  chapter,  which  has  been  inserted  in  a  footnote. 
The  reason  of  this  error  lies  in  the  fact  that  both  the  sixth  and 
seventh  verses  close  with  the  words  t^v  x^  *■'^'^  ^^^  probably  at  the 
same  part  of  the  Sinaitic  line.  The  loi  letters  of  this  verse  show 
that  it  would  occupy  about  seven  or  eight  lines  of  Sinaitic  type. 
Adding  them  we  correct  our  table,  which  now  states  that  Ephe- 
sians in  the  Sinaitic  Codex  occupies  73  S-pages  and  one  line. 
Further,  he  has  repeated  three  lines  in  VI  3,  in  the  words  iva  ev 

trot   I  yeprjrai    Kai    ear]   |  jxaKpoxpovios  \   em    rrjs    y^f.        At    111     1 8    he    haS 

again  repeated  a  line.  This  makes  the  Epistle  73  S-pages,  all  but 
three  lines. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  37 

We  now  proceed  to  discuss  the  various  readings. 


Letters. 

Text.  Rec. 

N 

B. 

IV.  H. 

Tr. 

I  I. 

iv  i(j)((Tm 

7 

+ 

— 

[+] 

[+] 

+ 

I    3. 

Koi  (TcoTrjpos 

10 



+ 







lis- 

Ti]V  aydiTTjv 

9 

+ 

— 





+ 

III  14. 

rod  Kv  Tjfiav  x^  '"^ 

13 

+ 

— 







V  22. 

vTTorucraecrde 

II 

+ 

— 







or  vTZOTa(T(Tt(TQ(i)aav 

14 



+ 





+ 

V30. 

iK  Trfs  arapKos  airov 

Koi    €/C 

T0)V  oa-reau  avTOV 

35 

+ 

— 







VI   12. 

rov  aloavo^ 

9 

+ 

— 



— 

— 

VI  20. 

Tov  €vnyye\iov 

13 

+ 

+ 

— 

[+] 

+ 

These  are  the  principal  passages,  and  we  see  that  on  the  most 
extreme  methods  of  criticism  it  would  be  possible  to  add  five  to 
seven  lines  to  the  Sinaitic  Codex,  or  in  the  opposite  direction  to 
remove  two  lines.  But  it  is  evident  that  there  are  really  only  two 
passages  to  discuss,  the  one  a  question  of  adding  a  line  to  the  Sina- 
itic text,  the  other  of  subtracting  two  lines.  These  readings  can 
hardly  affect  our  result,  which  gives  us  73  S-pages.  This  Epistle  is 
a  good  illustration  of  the  rule  that  a  document  originally  written  on 
the  V-  or  S-pattern  will  show  a  majority  of  V-  or  S-errors,  as  the 
case  may  be. 

11.  Philippians:  Here  there  are  only  two  important  readings : 

Letters.     Text.  Rec.      X  ^-  ^^-  f'-  ^''• 

III   16.     Kavovi,  TO  avTo  (ppovfiv       1 9  i~  — 

III  21.     els  TO  yeveadat  avTo  IJ  -\-  —  — 

Its  errors  are  both  of  the  V-type.  The  Codex  B  shows  us  33 
V-pages  in  the  Epistle,  which  will  not,  therefore,  admit  of  an  extra 
line  being  inserted.  But  in  noticing  this  apparent  leaning  to  the 
V-type,  we  must  not  forget  that  the  Epistle  is  only  three  lines  short 
of  a  page  in  the  S-type,  which  allows  us,  if  we  think  proper,  to 
admit  one  or  both  of  the  longer  readings.  Moreover  x  has  dropped 
a  line  at  II  18. 

12,  Colossians  :  Here  we  had  1 1  columns  and  15  lines  in  Codex  B. 

12         "  13     "         Sinaitic. 

In  either  case  just  over  the  page,  which  is  the  most  improbable 
thing  that  can  happen. 


38  NEW    TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

The  principal  readings  are  : 


Letters. 

Text.  Re 

■^.  s 

I      2. 

Kai   TOV    KV   )(V    IV 

9 

+ 

+ 

I    6. 

Koi  av^avofJLivov 

H 



+ 

I  14. 

8ia  TOV  aluaros  avrov 

15 

+ 

— 

I  25. 

f-yoj  nauXof  5ia 

12 



+ 

II    2. 

KCll   nilTpOS    KQl    TOV 

15 

+ 

[+] 

II  II. 

TO)V  afxapTiav 

II 

+ 

— 

II    6. 

enl  Toiis  vlovs  Trjs  dneideias     24 

+ 

+ 

+    +    + 


Of  these  readings  I  2  is  an  exact  line  in  the  Sinaitic,  it  is  probably 
an  addition.  I  6  is  also  an  exact  line,  and  has  been  dropped  by  a 
few  codices.  I  14  is  generally  admitted  to  be  an  interpolation. 
At  I  23  and  at  I  25  a  line  has  been  added  by  n.  II  2  is  very 
doubtful.  II  II  is  probably  an  addition.  Ill  6,  the  passage  is  re- 
jected by  B  only,  and  perhaps  D  ;  it  is  very  likely  genuine.  We 
infer  that  of  three  places  where  the  Sinaitic  contradicts  the  Vatican, 
it  is  incorrect  in  two  of  them.  The  Epistle  is  now  one  or  two 
lines  short  of  49  pages  of  the  S-type.  The  errors  are  about  evenly 
divided  between  the  two  types.  The  result  is  confirmed  by  ob- 
serving that  in  I  12,  Cod.  B  has  been  guilty  of  conflation  of  the 

two    readings    iKavoiauvri    and    KoXea-avTi,  so    as    to    make    KaXea-auTi  Koi 

iKavacTavTi. ;  it  seems  hardly  likely,  then,  that  B  contains  the  original 
type  of  the  text  of  Colossians. 

13.  Philemon  is,  as  already  shown,  10  S-pages  exactly. 

14.  Now  let  us  examine  the  arrangement  of  the  Gospel  of  Luke. 
Our  enumeration  of  columns  and  lines  gives  us  for  the  Gospel  401 
V-pages  or  598  S-pages.  But  neither  of  these  results  can  be 
accepted,  on  account  of  the  numerous  and  important  variants  which 
have  to  be  considered.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  two 
results  are  very  nearly  in  the  ratio  of  2  :  3.  This  would  be  exactly 
the  case  if  two  codices  were  written,  one  on  a  12-lined  page  and 
with  14  letters  to  the  line,  and  the  other  on  a  14-lined  page  and 
with  18  letters  to  the  line,  for  12  X  14  :  14  X  18  =  2  :  3,  Now 
the  two  great  MSS  very  nearly  fulfil  this  condition;  it  does  not, 
therefore,  surprise  us  if,  when  one  codex  suggests  400  V-pages,  the 
other  suggests  600  S-pages. 

Now,  turning  to  the  Gospel  of  Luke,  we  notice  in  the  first  place 
that  the  passage  containing  the  account  of  the  Agony  in  the  Garden 
has  been  excised  from  or  is  wanting  in  the  chief  exemplars.  The 
Vatican  Codex  ornits,  the  Sinaitic  brackets  it.  I  pointed  out  in  my 
recent  lectures  that  it  was  conceivable,  as  Epiphanius  states,  that 


\J^Ua^  ' 


KMGKAAyce 

peAocATroy[^ANOY 

eNICJ(y6)N(XY"T"0N 
K(Mf6N0MeN0Ce 
NATONIAeKTeNS 

crep^oNTTpocHY 
^eroKAiepeNero 

GpomBoiai/^atoc 
kataBainontsc 

GTriTHNrHN 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  39 

the  passage  was  excised  for  doctrinal  reasons,  and  that  there  were 
probably  other  words,  koI  eKXavae,  which  had  never  found  their  way- 
back  into  the  text.'  Counting  the  letters  of  the  doubtful  passage, 
and  adding,  if  it  be  thought  necessary,  10  letters  for  Knl  eKXavae,  we 
have  155  letters,  or  almost  exactly  an  S-page.  Here  we  have  a 
strong  intimation  that  the  Gospel  was  originally  written  on  the 
S-page,  and  that  the  account  of  the  Agony  is  an  authentic  part  of 
the  text,  easily  lost  or  excised. 

Turning  to  the  Sinaitic  Codex  we  find  that  the  passage  occupies 
eleven  lines  exactly,  without  the  words  added  by  us,  and  is  evidently 
easily  detached  from  the  main  body  of  the  text.  In  the  plate  annexed 
the  passage  is  completed,  and  given  as  a  specimen  of  the  S-page. 

Assuming  for  the  present  that  the  S-page  is  the  original  form 
of  Luke,  we  examine  the  next  important  passage,  bracketed 
by  Westcott  and  Hort,  Luke  XXII  ig,  20  from  to  itrep  Ifiau  8i86- 
fiivov  ...  to  TO  vTTep  vp.u)v  fKxvvv6fi.evov.  At  first  sight  it  sccms  that 
the  omission  of  this  passage  by  the  Western  text  might  be 
due  to  ofxoioTeXiVTov,  but  a  closer  examination  shows  that  it  con- 
tains 152  letters,  or  almost  exactly  an  S-page;  in  the  Sinaitic 
Codex  it  occupies  12  lines  and  7  letters,  but  one  of  the  lines  is  a 
very  short  one  and  has  only  three  letters.  It  looks  again  as  if  an 
S-page  had  been  either  omitted  or  inserted  ;  if  both  the  passages 
which  we  have  discussed  were  actual  pages  of  the  original  docu- 
ment, the  intervening  space  ought  to  be  an  exact  number  of  S-pages, 
i.  e.  the  space  between  the  iKxywuiiivov  of  the  second  passage  and 
the  commencement  of  the  account  of  the  agony  in  the  garden. 
Examination  of  the  MS  shows  the  intervening  space  to  be  a  column 
and  33  lines,  or  within  three  lines  of  being  7  S-pages.  It  is  doubtful, 
therefore,  whether  this  passage  be  an  integral  part  of  the  original 
document ;  and  bearing  in  mind  the  suspicious  resemblance  to  a 
passage  in  I  Cor.,  we  leave  the  matter  in  suspense  until  we  have 
examined  the  remaining  variants.  If  we  see  reason  to  conclude 
that  it  is  really  a  part  of  the  text,  we  shall  most  probably  find  that 
there  has  been  some  displacement  of  the  text  in  the  neighborhood. 
Before  passing  we  observe  that  the  34th  verse  of  the  XXIII  chapter, 
which  Westcott  and  Hort  bracket,  is  also  marked  with  suspicion 
in  the  Sinaitic  and  occupies  four  lines  of  the  text. 

The  doubtful  1 2th  verse  of  chap.  XXIV  in  the  Sinaitic  Codex 
begins  a  line,  and  occupies  8  lines  all  but  four  letters  ;  moreover, 
the  passage  has  dropped  four  letters  from  the  text  en  route  in  the 
word  nova  after  odovia. 

'  Epiph.  Ancor.  xxxi. 


40  NEIV   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

We  now  proceed  to  examine  the  text  in  detail,  much  in  the  same 
way  as  we  discussed  the  Gospel  of  John  ;  the  list  of  variants  is  very- 
long,  as  the  text  is  many  times  more  corrupt  than  that  of  John,  and 
we  therefore  content  ourselves  with  giving  approximate  results, 
deduced  from  a  long  array  of  doubtful  passages. 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  us  in  studying  the  portentous  list  of 
various  readings  is  that  the  greater  part  of  the  book  is  marked  by 
omissions,  but  when  we  come  to  the  last  two  chapters  we  find  a 
large  number  of  suspicious  additions,  contradicted  by  the  Western 
text.  It  looks  painfully  like  as  if  the  space  lost  by  omissions  in  the 
early  parts  of  the  book  had  been  utilized  in  the  latter  part  for  some 
additional  matter.  Examining  the  cases  where  the  Sinaitic  text  is 
erroneous,  or  probably  erroneous,  we  have  on  the  whole,  up  to 
XXII  25,  forty-six  lines  to  add,  the  criticism  of  the  text  being 
comparatively  easy.  Now  the  doubtful  passage  contained  in 
XXII  43,  44  begins  on  the  tenth  line  from  the  bottom  of  a  column, 
but  when  the  forty-six  lines  are  added  it  falls  at  once  into  the 
proper  place,  the  last  section  of  a  column.  This  would  leave  the 
Gospel,  if  undisturbed,  to  finish  on  the  23d  line  of  a  column ;  but 
now  the  criticism  becomes  extremely  difficult. 

In    XXII  31.  The  MS  is  probably  correct. 

XXII  64. 

XXII  68. 

XXII  62.  Two  lines  have  perhaps  been  added. 

XXIII  17.  Three  lines  must  be  removed. 

XXIII  38.  Correct. 

XXIII  34.  Probably  four  lines   have  been  inserted,  but  the 

passage  is  very  difficult. 

XXIV  12.     Eight  lines  perhaps  added, 
XXIV  31.     A  line  lost. 

XXIV    4.  A  line  probably  added. 

XXIV    6.  Two  lines  probably  added. 

XXIV  40.  Four  lines  perhaps  added. 

XXIV  36.  Two 

^  ■  \  Text  correct. 
49-) 

XXIV  51.     Text  probably  correct. 
XXIV  52.     Probably  two  lines  added. 
XXIV  53.     Text  probably  correct. 

The  result  being  that  23  lines  have  been  probably  added,  if  we 
retain  the  passage  XXIII  34  as  probably  authentic.     That  is  to 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  4 1 

say,  2  S-pages,  all  but  a  line,  have  now  to  be  removed.  But  we 
added  previously  4  S-pages,  all  but  a  line  (if  we  reckon  Ka\  eKXavae 
in  XXII  43) ;  we  have  therefore  on  the  whole  added  two  S-pages, 
together  with  a  lost  page.  Our  original  estimate  was  598  S-pages, 
it  is  now  601  S-pages.  Nothing  can  be  more  significant  than  this 
number  of  the  fact  that  an  S-page  too  many  has  crept  in,  and  it  can 
hardly  be  any  other  than  the  passage  which  we  were  in  doubt 
about  in  XXII  19;  we  therefore  finally  decide  to  remove  it. 

The  analysis  has  been  extremely  suggestive  to  our  own  mind ; 
we  started  out  with  the  prospect  of  reinserting  the  majority  of  the 
passages  usually  reckoned  as  doubtful,  but  the  singular  predomi- 
nance of  additions  in  the  closing  chapters  over  omissions  has  finally 
led  us  to  reject  those  passages,  or  the  majority  of  them,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  Western  text ;  and  we  have  finally  ended  with  a  book 
of  600  pages  almost  exactly,  which  we  are  now  prepared  to  print 
on  what  we  believe  will  represent,  qiiam  proxinie,  the  original 
sheets  of  uncial  writing.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  frequency  of 
errors  of  the  S-type  in  the  analysis  of  this  Gospel  confirms  our 
supposition  that  this  is  the  original  form  of  the  Gospel. 

15.  The  Acts  of  the  Apostles  is  one  of  the  books  which  we  have 
indicated  to  ourselves  as  likely,  from  its  abrupt  conclusion,  to  be 
written  on  full  sheets.  When  we  proceed  to  examine  the  principal 
doubtful  passages,  we  shall  find  that  the  majority  of  the  errors  are 
of  the  S-type.  There  are  nearly  fifty  passages  that  have  to  be 
examined,  and  from  these,  by  the  use  of  the  best  critical  apparatus, 
we  proceed  to  correct  the  text  of  the  Sinaitic  Codex,  in  which  the 
S-type,  if  it  exists,  is  preserved. 

The  following  are  the  passages  requiring  change : 

11     9*        l~  ""'  eXafjurai. 
II  20,      -f-  Koi  inKpavrj. 

II  21.     A  whole  verse  has  been  omitted,  4  S-lines. 

1 1  43.     A  sentence  has  been  inserted,  38  letters  :  iv  'UpovaaXfjfi 

(jiojSos  re  rjv  fJ.eyas  eVi  TTupTas  Kcii. 
VII  60.      -|-  (f)a>vrj  fxeydXrj. 

IX  12.      -|-  eV  opafiari. 

XI II  23.       ~\~  niTo  Tov  crnepfJLaTos. 

XIV  20,  21.     Two  verses  omitted,  66  letters,  5  S-lines. 

XV  32.  -|-  Kcti  iTTeaTqpL^nv. 

XXI  I3.  ~\~  <XalovTes  Koi. 

XXI  22.  —  Sft  nXrjdus  crvviXdi'iv. 

XX V HI  2J.  -\-  Kill  T?]  Kap8ui  (Tvva>aiv. 


42  NE^V   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

This  leaves  us  on  the  whole  with  about  14  lines  to  add  to  the  Sin- 
aitic  text,  which  now  occupies  (a  result  by  no  means  aimed  at,  and 
scarcely  anticipated)  144  columns  and  24  lines,  or  578  S-pages.  I 
do  not  however  regard  this  result  as  more  than  a  rough  prelimi- 
nary examination. 

I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  a  number  of  pages  have  been  lost 
from  the  conclusion  of  the  book.  The  celebrated  passage  VIII 
37  consists  of  about  96  letters,  perhaps  8  S-lines  ;  so  it  cannot  be 
restored,  on  the  ground  of  a  page  having  been  lost  from  the  origi- 
nal document.  It  is  not  unworthy  of  note  that  we  have  seen 
reason  to  refer  the  Gospel  of  Luke  to  the  same  type  and  to  an 
original  document  of  about  600  unit  sheets. 

16.  We  shall  now  defer  the  examination  of  the  remaining  books, 
reserving  the  discussion  of  them,  together  with  the  important  ques- 
tion of  the  closing  verses  of  St.  Mark,  and  some  other  points  of 
interest,  for  another  occasion  ;  and  we  shall  conclude  this  present 
article  by  a  brief  examination  of  one  or  two  early  uncial  texts  by 
the  light  of  the  results  already  obtained,  and  by  indicating  a  more 
general  method  of  determining  the  autograph  forms  of  any  given 
collection  of  letters. 

D  I.  Codex  Alexandrinus  is  written  in  tolerably  uniform  lines,  and 
in  double  columns.  The  number  of  lines  to  the  page  is  normally  50, 
but  sometimes  51,  and  in  one  or  two  instances  we  note  49.  In  other 
words,  the  normal  size  of  the  page  copied  has  been  affected  by 
omissions  and  additions,  but  principally  the  latter.  The  table  for 
this  codex  is  as  follows  : 


Columns 

Lints 

Matthew  begins  at  c.  XXV  6 

? 

6 

Mark 

50 

17 

Luke 

86 

20 

John 

53 

48 

or  counting  the  two  leaves  lost  VI  50  to  VIII  52 

61 

48 

Acts 

80 

7 

James 

7 

48 

I  Peter 

7 

47 

II  Peter 

5 

II 

I  John                                     • 

10 

26 

II  John 

49 

III  John 

51 

Jude 

2 

6 

Romans 

28 

32 

Columns 

Lines 

28 

21 

19 

38 

9 

39 

10 

39 

6 

48 

6 

48 

6 

27 

3 

23 

23 

16 

7 

31 

6 

14 

3 

19 

I 

18 

34 

28 

NEIV   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  43 


I  Cor. 

II  Cor. 
Galatians 
Ephesians 
Philippians 
Colossians 

I  Thessalonians 

II  Thessalonians 
Hebrews 

I  Tim. 

II  Tim. 
Titus 
Philemon 
Revelation 

It  will  be  observed  that  II  John  and  III  John  no  longer  agree  in 
the  number  of  lines,  the  column  on  which  the  second  Epistle  is 
written  being  wider  than  that  on  which  the  third  Epistle  is  written  ; 
this  latter  column  has  been  narrowed  in  order  to  make  room  for  a 
much  wider  column  in  the  Epistle  of  Jude,  which  sometimes  con- 
tains as  many  as  29  letters  to  the  line. 

In  this  MS  the  books  do  not  begin  uniformly  at  the  top  of  the 
page,  which  shows  that  the  orderly  arrangement  of  the  original 
matter  is  disappearing.  Thus,  I  John  does  not  begin  at  the  head 
of  a  page ;  we  have  first  29  lines,  then  9  columns,  then  47  lines, 
and  so  we  end  near  the  foot  of  a  column.  II  Cor.  begins  in  the 
middle  of  a  page ;  we  have  21  lines,  then  a  column  of  49  lines  only, 
then  18  more  columns  counting  the  three  lost  leaves,  and  then  18 
lines.  One  thing,  however,  is  very  remarkable  in  the  table,  and 
that  is  the  way  in  which  the  concluding  lines  group  themselves 
around  the  numbers  which  are  multiples  of  ten.  It  will  be  worth 
while  examining  this  point. 

Theoretically,  the  terminal  digits  of  the  lines  i,  2,  3,  .  .  .  o  ought 
to  be  tolerably  evenly  distributed,  but  when  we  examine  we  find 

0  occurs  once.  5  occurs  not  at  all. 

1  "  4  times.  6  "  4  times. 

2  "  once.  7  "  4  times. 

3  "  once.  8  "  8  times. 

4  "  once.  9  "  4  times. 


44  NEJF   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

Now  this  extraordinary  preference  for  the  numbers  i,  6,  7,  8,  9  is 
not  accidental,  but  is  a  survival  of  the  original  methods  of  arranging 
the  documents. 

The  fact  is  that  this  document  was  probably  originally  reduced 
from  documents  of  which  one  page  is  equivalent  to  the  fifth  part 
of  the  Alexandrian  column  ;  and  the  matter  of  the  original  docu- 
ments was  so  arranged  that  the  final  page  was  more  than  half  filled. 
This  explains  the  preference  for  the  endings  which  occupy  the 
latter  halves  of  the  decades.  The  question  arises,  was  this  arrange- 
ment of  the  matter  arbitrary,  or  are  there  any  residual  traces  of 
the  original  pages  ? 

An  examination  of  this  point  will,  I  think,  show  that  there  was 
a  time  when  the  fifth  of  the  column  of  Codex  A  was  a  V-page,  but 
the  traces  have  almost  disappeared.  This  may  be  seen  to  be 
roughly  the  case  by  calculating  the  letters  for  10  Alexandrian  lines, 
which  amount  to  something  over  230,  not  far  from  the  average  letters 
of  a  V-page.  And  the  suspicion  is  confirmed  by  remarking  that  the 
II  and  III  of  John,  which  are  a  column  in  A,  are  5  V-pages.  The 
arrangement  would  be  suggested  by  the  fact  that  the  number  of 
pages  in  so  many  of  the  different  Epistles  is  a  multiple  of  five  or  near 
it.  We  may  detect  the  residual  traces  of  the  primitive  form  by 
taking  some  portion  of  an  Epistle  and  examining  its  texts  side  by  side 
for  the  two  codices.  Let  us  take  the  beautifully  uniform  writing 
of  Codex  B  as  our  measuring  line ;  and  begin  with  one  of  the 
shortest  Epistles,  say  the  II  John.  By  hypothesis  10  lines  of  A 
ought  to  be  one  V-page.  Actually  the  first  ten  lines  of  A  have 
lost  two  letters  from  the  first  fourteen  lines  of  B.  The  scribe 
crowds  the  next  line  with  five  or  six  extra  letters,  and  by  the  end 
of  his  20th  line  is  two  letters  ahead  of  the  pattern.  By  the  30th 
line  he  is  6  or  7  letters  ahead,  and  by  the  40th  line  he  is  12  letters 
ahead,  thus  enabling  him  to  finish  the  epistle  in  nine  more  lines. 

Next,  let  us  try  the  first  Epistle  of  John.  The  loth  line  of  A 
does  not  agree  with  the  14th  of  B  in  its  ending,  but  we  note  a 
coincidence  in  ending  of  the 

II  of  A  and  the  14  of  B 

and  the  following  successive  coincidences  at  ending — 

23  of  A  and  the  31  of  B  60  of  A  and  the  76  of  B 

33     "  44     "  62     "  79     " 

48     "  64     "  65     "  83     " 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  45 

These  give  us  the  following  and  other  relations  between  the  A  and 
B  line  : 

A  =  ltB 

A=    f  B 

A  =  HB 

A  =3    |B 

A  =    I  B 

A=    IB 
so  A  =  li  B,  and  so  on, 

the  variety  of  which  is  striking ;  and  the  results  vary  much  from 
our  hypothesis  A  ^  |  B. 

The  same  irregularity  in  the  text  of  A  may  be  illustrated  by 
studying  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians.  The  first  10  lines  are 
exactly  a  V-page.  The  next  11  lines  are  a  V-page  and  8  letters. 
The  next  10  lines  bring  us  into  agreement  with  the  foot  of  the 
Vatican  column  all  but  a  single  letter  ;  so  that  in  these  three  V- 
pages  Codex  A  has  gained  a  line  on  its  normal  type.  Or  take 
the  Gospel  of  John  :  The  first  11  lines  of  A  contain  the  V-page 
and  2  letters.  The  first  22  lines  contain  exactly  the  two  V-pages. 
The  next  twelve  lines  contain  a  V-page  and  2  letters.  The  next 
eleven  lines  end  five  lines  in  advance  of  the  V-page ;  and  finally 
the  scribe  succeeds  in  ending  his  page  exactly  with  the  8th  line  of 
a  V-page.  So  that  A  is  exactly  six  lines  behind  time  on  its  first 
column. 

It  is  a  wonder,  when  we  examine  the  irregular  writing  of  A, 
that  we  were  able  to  find  any  trace  at  all  of  its  original  pattern,  if 
indeed  we  have  found  it  correctly. 

2.  The  following  table,  in  which,  by  the  hypothesis,  the  pages  of 
Codex  A  are  approximately  reduced  to  V-pages  and  compared 
with  the  Vatican  Codex,  will  be  useful : 


A 

B 

Mark 

251 

232 

Luke 

432 

411 

John 

310 

292 

Acts 

401 

391 

James 

40 

38 

I  Peter 

40 

38 

II  Peter 

26 

26  or  27 

I  John 

52  or 

53    51 

II  John 

5 

5 

46  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


A 

B 

Ill  John 

5 

5 

Jude 

II 

II 

Romans 

194 

148 

I  Corinthians 

132? 

139 

II  Corinthians 

99 

95 

Galatians 

49 

47 

Ephesians 

54 

49 

Philippians 

35 

33 

Colossians 

35 

34 

I  Thessalonians 

33 

32 

II  Thessalonians         18  18 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  type  has  almost  disappeared  except  from 
the  shorter  writings.  Codex  A,  then,  is  a  document  degenerate  in 
type,  but  bearing  traces  of  a  distant  genealogical  relation  to  MSS 
of  the  pattern  conserved  by  B. 

3.  If  we  take  another  instance,  say  Codex  Augiensis,  a  bilingual 
codex  collated  by  Scrivener,  we  have  a  tolerably  even  Greek  text, 
containing  27  or  28  lines  to  the  column,  but  the  number  of  letters 
to  the  line  fluctuates  between  wider  limits  than  in  previous  cases. 
We  may  put — 


Columns. 

Lines, 

Romans 

— 

15 

I  Corinthians 

50 

27 

II  Corinthians 

34 

27 

Galatians 

17 

15 

Ephesians 

18 

9 

Philippians 

12 

22 

Colossians 

13 

6 

I  Thessalonians 

II 

17 

II  Thessalonians 

5 

25 

I  Timothy 

13 

18 

II  Timothy 

10 

2 

Titus 

6 

6 

Philemon 

2 

16 

Here  all  trace  of  the  ancient  endings  has  disappeared,  and  the 
only  thing  noticeable  in  the  endings  is  an  accidental  recurrence  of 
multiples  of  9. 

E.  I.  Leaving  for  a  while  the  criticism  of  the  New  Testament, 
we  now  proceed  to  discuss  and  apply  the  general  method  of 
determining   the   forms  of  autographs   of  any  series  of  letters. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  47 

If  there  were  but  a  single  size  of  letter-paper  in  use,  and  a  single 
model  to  intimate  the  breadth  and  number  of  the  lines  which 
ought  normally  to  be  found  upon  each  separate  sheet,  the  follow- 
ing phenomena  would  present  themselves  in  the  study  of  any  given 
collection  of  letters : 

First,  there  would  be  a  very  great  scarcity  of  letters  ending  at 
the  first  few  lines  of  a  page ;  and  secondly,  as  we  move  down  the 
length  of  the  page,  we  should  find  a  greater  number  of  letters 
ending  at  the  successive  places  in  the  page.  Let  us  call  the 
number  of  epistles  which  occupy  approximately  any  given  space 
(the  space  itself  being  measured  either  by  the  lines  of  the 
paper  or  in  any  other  way)  the  frequency  for  the  space.  Then 
we  say  that  for  letters  occupying  between  n  and  7i-\-i  standard 
pages,  the  frequency  would  be  a  maximum  somewhere  near  the 
close  of  the  w  -f"  ith  page,  because  there  is  a  tendency,  other 
things  being  equal,  to  end  one's  epistles  rather  at  the  bottom  of 
a  page  than  near  the  top. 

For  convenience,  we  shall  now  change  slightly  our  method  of 
statement ;  we  reserve  the  word  letter  for  printed  or  written  type, 
and  use  epistle  for  the  document ;  this  will  save  confusion ;  and  we 
define  as  follows : 

2.  If  X  be  the  size  of  an  epistle,  expressed  in  lines  of  some  standard 
length,  or  in  actual  letters,  then  the  number  of  epistles  in  a  given 
collection  which  occupy  sizes  between  ;tr  dz  e  where  e  is  some  small 
arbitrary  quantity,  is  called  the  frequency  for  that  size,  and  is 
denoted  by  /{x').  We  construct  the  curve  of  frequency  in  the 
usual  manner,  and  according  to  our  reasoning  it  runs  in  the  manner 
expressed  by  the  small  curve  in  the  corner  of  the  annexed  plate. 
The  meaning  of  this  curve  is  simply  this,  that  if  any  length  ON 
be  taken  representing  the  length  of  a  given  epistle,  then  /W  repre- 
sents the  frequency  of  epistles  of  that  size. 

In  our  figure  OA  is  a  single  page,  OB  two  pages,  and  so  on ; 
and  the  curve  intimates  that  the  frequency  is  a  maximum  just 
before  we  reach  OA,  OB,  OC,  etc.,  and  that  the  frequency  dimin- 
ishes precipitately  when  we  pass  the  points  A,  B,  C,  etc. 

If  now  we  assume  a  second  size  of  paper  and  corresponding  pat- 
tern, we  should  simply  have  to  trace  a  second  curve  with  its  series 
of  maxima  over  the  first,  and  the  complete  system  would  repre- 
sent the  frequency.  And  the  same  would  be  the  case  if  there  were 
three,  four  or  more  patterns. 


48 


NEW  TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


3.  Conversely,  if  the  curve  were  traced  for  us  we  ought  to  be  able 
to  determine  very  closely  the  normal  sizes  of  the  patterns  of  original 
writing.  And  it  is  to  this  problem  that  we  address  ourselves,  since 
we  have  not  a  few  collections  of  such  ancient  writings,  and  have 
strong  evidence  that  the  writers  of  those  epistles  used  fixed  models 
by  which  to  write.  Not  to  spend  time  in  giving  well-known  quota- 
tions, we  simply  refer  to  Isidore,  Orig.  VI  12  :  "  Quaedam  genera 
librorum  certis  modulis  conficiebantur ;  breviori  forma  carmina 
atque  epistulae  ";  and  observe  with  Birt,  Das  Antike  Buchwesen, 
p.  288,  and  Reifferscheid,  that  the  expression  of  Isidore  is  really 
taken  from  Suetonius.  We  will  now  commence  to  analyse  the 
epistles  of  Pliny  and  to  determine  their  modulus  or  pattern. 

4.  The  table  which  follows  will  express  the  size  of  the  different 
epistles  as  nearly  as  possible  in  terms  of  the  number  of  lines  which 
they  occupy  in  the  Teubner  edition.  Then  from  the  complete 
tabulated  results  we  will  construct  our  curve,  roughly  to  scale,  and 
deduce  the  size  of  the  normal  Pliny  epistle  in  terms  of  the  Teubner 
line. 


No.  of 
Tettbnet 
Lines, 

l-H 

"OS 

1 

1 

> 

1 

> 

> 

1 

> 

x: 

1 

1 

I 

2 

3 

4 

5 

I 

I 

2 

10 

14 

6 

3 

I 

I 

2 

2 

18 

28 

7 

I 

I 

3 

3 

7 

16 

8 

I 

2 

2 

I 

13 

20 

9 

3 

2 

2 

3 

8 

19 

10 

2 

I 

I 

4 

3 

7 

20 

II 

I 

I 

I 

I 

7 

8 

20 

12 

2 

I 

I 

2 

4 

II 

13 

3 

I 

2 

2 

2 

2 

4 

16 

14 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

4 

10 

15 

2 

2 

2 

7 

16 

4 

2 

2 

I 

I 

10 

17 

2 

2 

4 

8 

18 

I 

I 

I 

2 

6 

19 

I 

2 

I 

I 

I 

6 

20 

I 

I 

I 

2 

2 

8 

21 

2 

I 

I 

4 

22 

I 

I 

I 

I 

2 

6 

It     \">     W    lap   bi-   \Jo  \iy  '*»    I^J"  l^g   jf^  l^°    l^-»'  It"    I>'^   I^'"    !?■)"  lye     |yj-   |<oo   |/oj-  ^/g    |/«-  |/jo  \/3f  \/jo  \/3i- \/*o  \/*a-\yi-v 


m 


J 


NEW  TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  49 


No.  of 

Teubner 

Lines. 

1— 1 

1 

>— 1 
p— 1 

1 

> 
i-i 

1 

1 

1—! 
> 

1 

> 

1 

> 

1 

1 

x" 

1 

23 

3 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

8 

24 

I 

I 

2 

I 

I 

I 

7 

25 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

5 

26 

I 

I 

2 

27 

I 

I 

2 

28 

I 

I 

I 

3 

29 

I 

I 

2 

4 

30 

I 

2 

3 

31 

I 

I 

I 

I 

4 

32 

I 

2 

3 

33 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

5 

34 

I 

I 

I 

I 

4 

35 

I 

I 

36 

I 

2 

I 

4 

37 

I 

'i 

38 

I 

I 

2 

39 

I 

I 

2 

40 

I 

I 

2 

41 

T 

I 

2 

42 

I 

I 

43 

I 

I 

2 

44 

1 

I 

2 

45 

I 

2 

3 

46 

I 

I 

2 

47 

2 

I 

2 

I 

6 

48 

I 

I 

I 

3 

49 

0 

50 

I 

I 

51 

I 

I 

52 

I 

I 

53 

I 

I 

2 

54 

0 

55 

I 

I 

56 

0 

57 

0 

58 

I 

I 

59 

0 

60 

0 

61 

I 

I 

62 

0 

63 

0 

64 

0 

65 

I 

I 

66 

0 

50  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


Xs.,-"'         ^         ^         '-^         >         >         >         ^         ^         >^ 

^  "^    ^  <^  <^  <^  fc*^  ..... 


>■ 

> 

> 

•<« 

<< 

<i. 

'i 

<a 

^ 

^ 

"i 

<a 

«:; 

Oq 

"^ 

67  o 

68  o 

69  o 

70  o 

71  o 

72  II 

73  I  1 

74  o 

75  o 

76  I  I 

77  o 

78  o 

79  I  I  13 

80  o 

81  o 

82  o 

83  o 

84  o 

85  •  o 

86  o 

87  II  2 
8S  o 
89  o 
qo  o 

91  o 

92  o 

93  o 

94  o 

95  I  I 

96  o 

97  I  I 

98  o 

99  o 

100  o 

101  o 

102  o 

103  o 

104  o 

105  I  I 

106  o 

107  o 

108  o 

109  o 
no  o 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  51 


■>8o,-'-H  HH  HH  H.  >  >  >  >  G  X! 


>■ 

> 

> 

> 

<< 

■^ 

-^ 

-t< 

s 

5 

^ 

^ 

.<a 

■i 

<a 

S 

«Q 

=Q 

^ 

^ 

'S  L^  Li  ,N^             ,s'=^             ^             ^             ."=>               '=^               "S               'S               «               S          .'5 

111  o 

112  o 
"3  o 

114  •  o 

115  o 

116  o 

117  o 
"8  .  II 
"9  o 

120  o 

121  o 

122  o 

123  o 

124  o 

125  o 

126  o 

127  o 

128  I  I 

129  o 

130  o 

131  I  I 

132  '  o 

133  o 

134  o 

135  o 

136  o 

137  o 

138  o 

139  o 

140  o 

141  I  I 

142  o 

143  o 

144  o 

145  o 

146  I  I 

5.  The  curve  is  now  approximately  constructed,  and  is  given  in 
the  annexed  plate. 

From  the  arrangement  of  the  maxima  in  the  curve  of  frequency 
we  have  now  to  deduce  the  normal  form. 

Our  largest  epistle  is  146  lines  of  Teubner  type ;  now  we  have 

Pliny's  own  statement  that  there  are  never  more  than  twenty  sheets 


52  NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 

to  a  scapus  or  roll,  and  although  this  statement  is  not  strictly 
accurate,  we  have  a  right  to  assume  it  to  be  so  for  Pliny  him- 
self. Suppose  then  that  this  146  lines  is  just  under  20  sheets,  this 
would  make  the  single  sheets  just  over  7.3  lines ;  and  we  should 
expect  to  find  successive  maxima  near  the  points  x  =  7.3,  x  =  14.6, 
X  =  21.9,  X  =  29.2,  and  so  on;  or,  beginning  with  the  figures  in 
reverse  order,  we  look  for  maxima  at  the  points  139.7, 1324,  125.1, 
117.8,  110.5,  103.2,  95.9,  88.6,  81.3,  74,  66.7,  59.4,  52.1,44.8  and  so 
on.  This  is  found  to  be  almost  exactly  the  case  for  many  of  the 
places  indicated.  The  higher  maxima  above  x  =  ^o  are  at 
once  seen  to  be  parts  of  the  same  system ;  but  the  lower  numbers 
of  the  system  seem  to  be  a  little  too  small. 

The  single  sheet  estimated  at  7.3  Teubner  lines  is  a  little  wrong  in 
its  decimal  place,  and  probably  should  be  7.5  or  7.6.  For  it  is 
evident  that  the  20th  page  of  the  letter  in  question  (III  9)  was  not 
quite  filled.  He  says,  "  Hie  erit  epistolae  finis,  re  vera  finis ; 
litteram  non  addam."  Taking  the  latter  estimate,  and  observing 
that  the  average  Teubner  line  may  be  put  at  50  letters  (which  is 
very  nearly  the  case),  we  have  380  letters  to  the  Pliny  page,  which 
is  just  over  10  average  hexameters ;  in  all  probability,  then,  the 
majority  of  the  Pliny  epistles,  especially  the  longer  ones,  are  written 
on  a  20-lined  page  of  half-hexameters.  Whether  in  the  smaller 
epistles  a  smaller  pattern  is  sometimes  used  does  not  at  present 
appear ;  but  certainly  almost  all  the  long  ones  are  very  nearly  of 
the  pattern  indicated.' 

6.  We  are  able  to  apply  our  result  to  one  interesting  example. 

In  Pliny  IV  11  we  have  an  epistle  of  about  61  Teubner  lines, 
in  which  the  writer  concludes  by  demanding  an  equally  long  reply, 
and  threatens  to  count  not  only  the  pages  of  the  answer,  but  the 
lines  and  syllables.  "  Ego  non  paginas  tantum  sed  versus  etiam 
syllabasque  numerabo."  From  the  fact  that  the  epistle  is  not  quite 
61  Teubner  lines,  and  since  8  X  7.6  =  60.8,  we  infer  that  he  actually 
finished  the  last  sheet  very  closely.  The  allusion,  then,  to  counting 
lines  and  syllables  does  not  refer,  as  one  might  have  at  first  sup- 
posed, to  a  superfluous  page,  but  to  his  purpose  not  to  be  satisfied 
with  an  eight-paged  epistle  in  reply  unless  the  pages  contain  20 
good  lines  to  the  page,  and  each  line  of  a  proper  length. 

'  For  instance,  if  the  normal  page  were  7.4  lines,  there  would  not  be  more 
than  about  3  out  of  the  20  longest  epistles  in  which  the  concluding  page 
was  not  more  than  half  filled. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS.  53 

Birt  (Das  Antike  Buchwesen,  p.  161)  has  curiously  under- 
estimated the  length  of  this  epistle ;  he  describes  it  as  a  long  epistle, 
which  must  have  occupied  over  two  pages,  and  infers  that  the 
desired  reply  is  to  have  at  least  three  pages,  the  third  of  which  is 
to  carry  ten  additional  lines,  together  with  a  half  line  of  ten 
syllables. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  note  that  the  celebrated  letter  of  Pliny 
to  Trajan  (X  96)  is  written  on  a  roll  of  seven  sheets,  wanting  a 
couple  of  lines  or  thereabouts.  The  answer  occupies  about  a  sheet 
and  a  half  of  the  same  style  of  writing. 

There  are  traces  of  the  use  of  a  smaller  page  of  20  half-iambics, 
or  about  5.7  Teubner  lines.  Perhaps  it  is  to  this  model  and  a  roll 
of  5  sheets  that  Pliny  refers,  when  he  says  (III  14),  about  the 
22d  line,  "  Charta  adhuc  superest."  The  whole  letter  is  not -30 
lines.  But  it  may  almost  as  well  be  taken  as  a  4-paged  letter  of 
the  larger  size. 

We  can  now  print  the  Pliny  letters  from  their  autographs  approxi- 
mately. 

7.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  previous  investigation  enables  us  at 
once  to  fix  a  superior  limit  to  the  number  of  pages  in  the  separate 
books  to  which  the  letters  are  reduced.  A  full  page  of  the  Teubner 
edition  is  38  lines  or  5  Pliny  pages.  The  first  book  cannot  therefore 
contain  more  than  105  Pliny  pages.  The  second  book  gives  precisely 
the  same  estimate,  so  does  the  third,  and  the  fourth,  and  the  fifth ;  the 
sixth  gives  120  as  the  superior  limit,  the  seventh  1 10,  the  eighth  105, 
the  ninth  120,  the  tenth  150.  Could  we  have  a  more  forcible  sug- 
gestion that,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  the  letters  were  actually 
reduced  into  rolls  of  igo  sheets  apiece  when  they  came  to  be  edited  ? 

8.  A  precisely  similar  analysis  applied  to  the  Tauchnitz  text  of 
Josephus  enables  us  to  determine  the  original  form  of  many  of  the 
documents  embedded  in  his  writings.  We  have  extracted  between 
60  and  70  letters  and  decrees  from  the  Life  and  the  Antiquities. 

The  results  arrange  themselves  as  follows : 


Tatichnitz 
lines. 

No.  of  Epistles 
of  that  length. 

Tauchnitz 
lines. 

No. 
o/i 

of  Epistles 
■hat  length. 

3 

I 

8 

5 

4 

7 

9 

2 

5 

0 

10 

I 

6 

I 

II 

5 

7 

6 

12 

5 

k.  ■■■' 


? 


54 


NEW   TESTAMENT  AUTOGRAPHS. 


Tauchnitz 
lines. 

No 
of 

of  Epistles 
that  length. 

13 

I 

14 

2 

15 
16 

2 
I 

17 

18 

3 

I 

19 

0 

20 

4 

21 

I 

22 

I 

23 

2 

24 

3 

25 
26 

I 
0 

Taitcfinitz 
lilies. 

217 

2| 


3b 
31 

^; 

i4 
35 
37 
43 

54 


N'o.  of  E.pistles 
of  that  length. 

I 

I 

O 

2 

O 

O 

O 

I 

I 

I 

2 

I 

I 


Here  we  are  at  once  struck  with  the  recurrence  of  the  multiples  of 
four,  and  examination  at  once  shows  that  four  lines  of  Tauchnitz 
type  in  Josephus  are  12  half-iambics  or  an  S-page  very  exactly. 
Similar  examination  will  show  that  a  page  of  20  half-iambics  is 
6.6  Tauchnitz  lines,  and  a  page  of  20  half-hexameters  is  11.6  lines. 
From  these  results  the  majority  of  the  writings  indicated  are  at 
once  reduced  to  their  original  patterns.  The  recurrence  of  the 
S-type  simply  means  that  Josephus  has  manufactured  not  a  few  of 
them,  as  letters  would  have  been  written  by  his  own  hand,  for  we 
have  already  determined,  from  the  stichometry  of  the  Antiquities, 
and  confirmed  the  result  by  the  examination  of  certain  letters,  that 
Josephus  uses  the  iambic  verse  as  his  model. 


Univei 

Sou 

Lit 


ERRATA. 

P.  3,  lines  10  and  11  from  bottom,  \tz.6.  passage  iox  "sentence." 
P.  7,  line  22  from  top,  read  is  roughly  represented  by  for  "  is  represented 
by." 

P.  19,  last  line,  read  Engastrimytho  for  "  Engastrimutho." 
P.  22,  line  21  from  top,  read  Saligniana  for  "  Saligniani." 
P.  24,  lines  16  and  15  from  bottom,  read  To  this  type  belong  the  MSS  for- 
merly known  as  I,  N,  P  {which  are  fragvients  of  the  same  original); 


